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ELIZABETH TO VICTORIA 
(1580-1880). 

CHOSEN AND ARRANGED 
BY 

JAMES M. GARNETT, M.A., LL.D. 

Professor of the English Language and Literature 
in the University of Virginia. 







BOSTON, U.SA. : 

PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY 

1 89I. 



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Copyright, 1890, 
Bv GINN & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved. 



Typography by J. S. Cashing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
Presswork by Ginn & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 






PREFACE 



A Preface may be expected to give the raison d'etre of a 
book, especially of a book of selections, when one might think 
this business overdone. But, in the words of Leigh Hunt (Pref- 
ace to Imagination and Fancy), "The Editor has often wished 
for such a book himself; and as nobody will make it for him, 
he has made it for others," — and for himself, I would add. 

I have long wished to use with my class in English Literature 
Professor Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature, but I 
thought it useless for students to study the lives of authors and 
detailed criticism of their style without having in hand examples 
of that style of sufficient length to enable the student to form 
some idea of the justness of the criticism. It is true that we 
have two recent books of prose selections : Saintsbury's Speci- 
mens of English Prose Style from Malory to Macaulay, and 
Galton's English Prose from Maundeville to Thackeray, but 
neither of them suited my purpose. Mr. Saintsbury's book con- 
tains too many authors and too brief specimens of their style. 
A book containing ninety-six authors, with specimens varying 
from two to six pages, would not fulfil the object I had in view. 
But Mr. Saintsbury has prefixed to his volume an excellent essay 
on English Prose Style, which should be reprinted in pamphlet 
form for use with any book of selections. Mr. Cxalton's book is 
not liable to the above ol ejection to the same extent, as it con- 

iii 



iv PREFACE, 

tains fifty-six authors, and the selections are of greater length ; 
but some of the authors might be omitted without much loss, 
and some of the selections here also are too short. I wished, 
moreover, to suit the selections, as far as was consistent with the 
object of giving a satisfactory view of the progress of English 
prose for the last three hundred years, to the leading authors 
criticised in Professor Minto's Manual, and this has been done 
in the main, the chief exceptions being the writers of the present 
century, most of whom Professor Minto has criticised all too 
briefly. The book may, however, be used in connection with 
any Manual of English Literature. 

I cannot expect to satisfy everybody. Some, perhaps, will 
criticise omissions ; others, inclusions. Reasons might be given 
for the choice of the authors and pieces selected, but it would 
prolong this Preface to too great length. I should have been glad 
to include more authors, but I had to bear in mind the compass 
of a single volume, and I fear that the book is already too bulky. 
This restriction has, too, prevented me from beginning earlier ; 
but the middle of the reign of Elizabeth was, I think, the begin- 
ning of the formation of an English prose style, as it was the; 
beginning of our modern poetry and drama, for Lyly's Euphues 
was contemporary with Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, and Lyly's 
comedies were the first worthy of consideration from a literary 
point of view. The historical student should extend his studies 
at least as far back as Wyclif and Chaucer, to see English prose 
in the making ; but the general reader will seldom take up the 
prose authors before Lyly, and will need more help to interpret 
them. 

I have appended brief notes to these selections, purposely 
limited to explanations of words and allusions that I thought 



PREFACE. 



desirable for the student, but not intended to take the place of 
the classical, biographical, or verbal dictionary. The labor of 
identifying the Latin quotations has been great, and will be appre- 
ciated by those only who have undergone similar labor. Some 
of the quotations have, notwithstanding, eluded my search. The 
book has occupied much longer time than I anticipated when it 
was undertaken. The proof has been read repeatedly and with 
great care, but as I cannot natter myself that all errors of the 
press have been eliminated, I shall be obliged for information as 
to those detected. That the volume may contribute to acquaint 
the student practically with the formation of English prose style, 
and may prove to be a help to the teacher, is the earnest wish 

of the compiler. 

JAMES M. GARNETT. 



University of Virginia, Va. 
July 4, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface iii 

I. John Lylv (1553 or 4-1606). 

Euphues and his England. Euphues Glasse for Europe. «...=,. 1 
II. Sir Philip Sidney (1 554-1 586). 

An Apologie for Poetrie 24 

III. Richard Hooker (1553 or 4-1600). 

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book 1 49 

IV. Francis Bacon (1561-1626). 

1. Essays : Of Religion. Of Unity in Religion . 66 

2. History of King Henry VII 73 

V. Ben Jonson (1 574-1 637). 

Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter 90 

VI. Thomas Fuller (1 608-1 661). 

The Holy State 105 

VII. John Milton (1608-1674). 

Areopagitica ... 1 28 

VIII. Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). 

Sermon preached at Golden drove ................... 141 

IX. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). 

Urn-Burial (Hydriotaphia) k ....... . 161 

X. Abraham Cowley (161 8-1 667). 

1. On the Government of Oliver Cromwell, . . 177 

2. Essays : Of the Shortness of Life. Of Myself 190 

XI. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1608-1674). 

Essays : Reflections on the Happiness which we may enjoy in 

and from ourselves 198 

XII. Str William Temple (1 628-1 699). 

Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning , 215 

vii 



vin TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

XIII. John Dryden (1631-1700). PAGE 

1. An Essay of Dramatic Poesy 233 

2. Defence of the Epilogue 247 

3. Preface to the Fables . . . . 262 

XIV. Jonathan Swift (1 667-1 745). 

The Battle of the Books 271 

XV. Joseph Addison (1672-17 19). 

Selections from The Spectator : 

1. The Coverley Papers 299 

2. The English Tongue. 314 

3. Criticism on Milton's Paradise Lost. 318 

XVI. Sir Richard Steele (1 675-1 729). 

Selections from The Spectator : 

1. The Coverley Papers 328 

2. On Reading the Church Service 351 

XVII. Daniel Defoe (1661-1731). 

History of the Plague in London, 1665 355 

XVIII. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751). 

Letters on the Study and Use of History : Letter II 379 

XIX. David Hume (1711-1776). 

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary : 

1. Of Eloquence.. 397 

2. Of Tragedy 407 

XX. Oliver Goldsmith (1 728-1 774). 

Essays : On the Use of Metaphors 416 

XXI. Samuel Johnson (1709- 1784). 

Preface to Shakspeare ........... 433 

XXII. Edmund Burke (1 728-1 797). 

Speech on Conciliation with America . . . 453 

XXIII. Edward Gibbon (i 737-1 794). 

Memoirs of My Life and Writings 472 

XXIV. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). 

Essay on the Drama . . 496 

XXV. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772- 1834). 

Biographia Literaria, Chapter XXI. : 

Remarks on the Present Mode of Conducting Critical Journals 5 1 2 
XXVI. William Hazlitt (1 778-1830). 

Table-Talk : Opinions on Books, Men, and Things : 

On Application to Study 522 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix 

XXVII. Charles Lamb (1775-1834)- PAGE 

Essays of Elia : 

1. The Old and the New Schoolmaster 53° 

2. A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married 

People 545 

3. The Genteel Style in Writing ■ • ■ 55 2 

XXVIII. Robert Southey (1 774-1843). 

Selections from The Doctor 55 8 

XXIX. Walter Savage Landor (1775- 1864). 
Dialogues of Literary Men : 
Samuel Johnson and John Home Tooke 57 6 

XXX. Leigh Hunt (1784- 1859). 

What is Poetry? • 594 

XXXI. Thomas De Quincey (i775~ l8 59)- 

Shakspeare 3 

XXXII. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859). 

The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration 637 

XXXIII. Thomas Carlyle (1 795-1881). 

1. Biography - ' 

2. Hero-Worship. The Hero as Poet . . . Shakspeare .... 688 



JOHN LYLY. 

(1553 or 4 — 1606.) 

EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 

EUPHUES (iLASSE FOR EUROPE. 
[Written in 1580. | 

But having entreated 1 sufficiently of the countrey and their 
conditions, let me come to the Glasse I promised, being the 
court, where, although I should, as order requireth, beginne with 
the chiefest, yet I am enforced with the Painter to reserve my 
best colours to end Venus, and to laie the ground with the basest. 

First, then, I must tell you of the grave and wise Counsailors, 
whose foresight in peace warranteth saf[e]tie* in warre, whose^pro- 
vision in plentie, maketh sufficient in dearth, whose care in health 
is as it were a preparative against sicknesse ; how great their wisdom 
hath beene in all things, the twentie two yeares peace doth both 
shew and prove. For what subtilty hath ther[e] bin wrought so 
closly, what privy attempts so craftily, what rebellions stirred up 
so disorderly, but they have by policie bewrayed, 2 prevented by 
wisdome, repressed by justice ? What conspiracies abroad, what 
confederacies at home, what injuries in anye place hath there beene 
contrived, the which they have not eyther foreseene before they 
could kindle, or quenched before they could flame ? 

If anye wilye Ulysses should faine madnesse, there was amonge 
them alwayes some Palamedes to reveale him ; if any Thetis went 

1 treated. 2 exposed (them). 

* " Variations or additions of words, and of important letters in words, from 
the first editions, are inserted between [ ]." — Arber. 

1 



2 JOHN LYLY. 

about to keepe hir sonne from the doing of his countrey service, 
there was also a wise Ulysses in the courte to bewraye it : If Sinon 
came with a smoothe tale to bringe in the horse into Troye, there 
hath beene alwayes some couragious Lacaon to throwe his speare 
agaynst the bowelles, whiche, beeing not bewitched with Lacaon, 
hath unfoulded that which Lacaon suspected. 

If Argus with his hundred eyes went prying to undermine 
Jupiter, yet met he with Mercwie, who whis[t]elled all his eyes 
out : in-somuch as ther[e] coulde never yet any craft prevaile 
against their policie, or any chalenge against their courage. There 
hath alwayes beene Achilles at home to buckle with Hector abroad, 
Nestors gravitie to countervail Priams counsail, Ulisses subtilties 
to ma[t]ch with Antenors policies. England hath al[l] those yat 3 
can 4 and have wrestled with al others, wher-of we can require no 
greater proofe then experience. 

Besides they have al[l] a ze[a]lous care for the encreasing of 
true religion, whose faiths for the most part hath bin [beene] tried 
through the fire, which they had felt, had not they fledde over the 
water. More-over the great studie they bend towards schooles of 
learning, both sufficiently declare that they are not only furtherers 
of learning, but fathers of the learned. O thrise [thrice] happy 
England where such Counsaylours are, where such people live, 
where such vertue springeth ! 

Amonge these shall you finde Zopirus that will mangle him-selfe 
to do his country good, Achates that will never start an ynch from 
his Prince Aeneas, Nausicla that never wanted a shift in extremitie, 
Cato that ever counsayled to the best, Ptolomeus Philadelphus 
that alwaies maintained learning. Among the number of all which 
noble and wise counsailors, I can- not but for his honors sake 
remember the most prudent and right honourable ye Lorde Bnrg- 
leigh, high Treasurer of that Realme, no lesse reverenced for his 
wisdome than renowmed for his office, more loved at home than 
feared abroad e, and yet more feared for his counsayle amonge 

8 that, v = th. 4 Common error of omission of infinitive after auxiliary. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 3 

other nations then sworde or fyre, in whome the saying of Aga- 
memnon may be verified, who rather wished for one such as Nestor, 
then many such as A/ax. 

This noble man I found so ready, being but a straunger, to do 
me good, that neyther I ought to forget him, neyther cease to 
pray for him, that as he hath the wisdome of Nestor, so he may 
have the age, that having the policies of Ulysses, he may have his 
honor, worthye to lyve long, by whome so manye lyve in quiet, 
and not unworthy to be advaunced, by whose care so many have 
beene preferred. . " 

Is not this a Glasse, fayre Ladyes, for all other countne[s] to 
beholde wher[e] there is not only an agreement in fayth, religion, 
and counsayk, but in friendshyppe, brother-hoode, and lyving? 
By whose good endevours vice is punyshed, vertue rewarded, 
peace establyshed, forren broyles repressed, domesticall cares 
appeased? what nation can of Counsailors desire more? what 
Dominion, yat excepted, hath so much? when neither courage 
can prevaile against their chivalrie, nor craft take place agaynst 
their counsayle, nor both joyned in one be of force to undermine 
their country. When you have daseled your eies with this Glasse, 
behold here an other. It was my fortune to be acquainted with 
certaine English Gentlemen, which brought mee- to the court, 
wher[e] when I came, I was driven into a maze to behold the 
lusty and brave gallants, the be[a]utiful and chast Ladies, ye rare 
and godly orders, so as I could not tel whether I should most 
commend vertue or bravery. At the last, coming oft[e]ner thether 
then it beseemed one of my degree, yet not so often as they 
desired my company, I began to prye after theyr manners, natures, 
and lyves, and that which followeth I saw, where-of who so doubt- 
eth, I will sweare. 

The Ladyes spend the morning in devout prayer, not resembling 
the Gentlewoemen in Greece and Italy, who begin their morning 
at midnoone, and make their evening at midnight, using sonets for 
psalmes, and pastymes for prayers, reading ye Epistle of a Lover, 
when they should peruse the Gospell of our Lorde, drawing wanton 



4 JOHN LYLY. 

lynes when death is before their face, as Archimedes did triangles 
and circles when the enimy was at his backe. Behold, Ladies, in 
this glasse that the service of God is to be preferred before all 
things ; imitat[e] the Englysh Damoselles, who have theyr bookes 
tyed to theyr gyrdles, not fe[a]thers, who are as cunning in ye 
scriptures, as you are in Ariosto or Pe track or anye booke that 
lyketh 5 you best, and becommeth you most. 

For bravery 6 I cannot say that you exceede them, for certainly 
it is ye most gorgeoust [gorgious] court that ever I have seene, 
read, or heard of, but yet do they not use theyr apperell so nicelye 
as you in Italy, who thinke scorn to kneele at service, for feare of 
wrinckles in your silks, who dare not lift up your head to heaven, 
for feare of rumpling ye rufs in your neck, yet your hands I con- 
fesse are holden up, rather I thinke to shewe your ringes then to 
manifest your righteousnesse. The braverie they use is for the 
honour of their Prince, the attyre you weare for the alluring of 
your pray ; the ritch apparell maketh their beautie more seene, 
your disguising causeth your faces to be more suspected ; they 
resemble in their rayment the Estrich who, being gased on, closeth 
hir winges and hideth hir fethers ; you in your robes are not unlike 
the pecocke, who, being praysed, spreadeth hir tayle, and be- 
wrayeth hir pride. Velvetts and Silkes in them are like golde 
about a pure Diamond, in you like a greene hedge about a filthy 
dunghill. Thinke not, Ladies, that bicause you are decked with 
golde, you are endued with grace ; imagine not that, shining like 
the Sunne in earth, yea " shall climbe the Sunne in heaven ; looke 
diligently into this English glasse, and then shall you see that the 
more costly your apparell is, the greater your curtesie should be, 
that you ought to be as farre from pride, as you are from povertie, 
and as neere to princes in beautie, as you are in brightnes. Bicause 
you are brave, disdaine not those that are base ; thinke with your 
selves that russet coates have their Christendome, that the Sunne 
when he is at his h[e]ight shineth aswel upon course carsie, 8 as 

6 pleaseth. b finery. 7 ye. B kersey. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 5 

cloth of tissue ; though you have pearles in your eares, Jewels in 
your breastes, preacious stones on your fingers, yet disdaine not 
the stones in the streat, which, although they are nothing so noble, 
yet are they much more necessarie. Let not your robes hinder 
your devotion, learne of the English Ladies yat God is worthy to 
be worshipped with the most price, to whom you ought to give all 
praise, then shall you be like stars to ye wise, who now are but 
staring stockes to the foolish, then shall you be praysed of 9 most, 
who are now pointed at of all, then shall God beare with your 
folly, who nowe abhorreth your pride. 

As the Ladies in this blessed Islande are devout and brave, so 
are they chast and beautifull, insomuch that, when I first behelde 
them, I could not tell whether some mist had bleared myne eyes, 
or some stra[u]ng[e] enchauntment altered my minde, for it may 
bee, thought I, that in this Island either some Artimedorus or 
Lisimandro, or some odd Nigromancer did inhabit, who would 
shewe me Fayries, or the bodie of Helen, or the new shape of 
Venus, but comming to my selfe, and seeing that my sences were 
not chaunged, but hindered, that the place where I stoode was no 
enchaunted castell, but a gallant court, I could scarce restraine 
my voyce from crying, There is no beautie but in England. There 
did I behold them of pure complexion, exceeding the lillie and 
the rose, of favour (wherein ye chiefest beautie consisteth) sur- 
passing the pictures that were feyned [fained], 10 or the Magition 
that would faine, their eyes pe[a]rcing like the Sun beames, yet 
chast, their speach pleasant and sweete, yet modest and curteous, 
their gate comly, their bodies straight, their hands white, al[l] things 
that man could wish, or women woulde have, which, howe much 
it is, none can set downe, when as ye one desireth as much as 
may be, the other more. And to these beautifull mouldes, chast 
mindes ; to these comely bodies temperance, modestie, milde- 
nesse, sobrietie, whom I often beheld merrie yet wise, conferring 
with courtiers yet warily, drinking of wine yet moderately, eating 

a by. "' feigned. 



6 JOHN LYL V. 

of delicat[e]s yet but their eare ful, list[enjing to discourses of 
love but not without reasoning of learning : for there it more 
delighteth them to talke of Robin hood, then to shoot in his bowe, 
and greater pleasure they take to heare of love, then to be in love. 
Heere Ladies is a Glasse that will make you blush for shame, and 
looke wan for anger ; their beautie commeth by nature, yours by 
art ; they encrease their favours with faire water, you maintain c 
yours with painters colours ; the haire they lay out groweth upon 
their owne heads, your seemelines hangeth upon others ; theirs is 
alwayes in their owne keeping, yours often in the Dyars ; their 
bewtie [beautie] is not lost with a sharpe blast, yours fadeth with 
a soft breath: Not unlike unto Paper Floures [flowers], which 
breake as soone as they are touched, resembling the birds in 
sEgypt called Ides, who being handled, loose their feathers, or the 
serpent Serapic, which beeing but toucht with a brake, 11 bursteth. 
They use their beautie, bicause it is commendable, you bicause 
you woulde be common ; they if they have little, doe not seeke to 
make it more, you that have none endeavour to bespeake most ; 
if theirs wither by age, they nothing esteeme it ; if yours wast by 
yeares, you goe about to keepe it ; they knowe that beautie must 
faile if life continue, you sweare that it shall not fade if coulours 
last. 

But to what ende, Ladies, doe you alter the giftes of nature 
by the shiftes of arte ? Is there no colour good but white, no 
Planet bright but Venus, no Linnen faire but Lawne ? Why goe 
yee about to make the face fayre by those meanes that are most 
foule, a thing loathsome to man, and therefore not lovely, horrible 
before God, and therefore not lavvefull? 

Have you not hearde that the beautie of the Cradell is most 
brightest, that paintings are for pictures with-out sence, not for 
persons with true reason? Follow at the last, Ladies, the Gentle- 
women of England, who being beautifull doe those thinges as shall 
beecome so amyable faces, if of an indifferent h[i]ew[e], those 

11 a pointed instrument, 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 7 

things as they* shall make them lovely, not adding an ounce to 
beautie, that may detract a dram from vertue. Besides this their 
chastitie and temparance [temperaunce] is as rare as their beautie, 
not going in your footesteppes, that drinke wine before you rise to 
encrease your colour, and swill it when you are up, to provoke 
your lust : They use their needle to banish idlenes, not the pen to 
nourish it, not spending their times in answering ye letters of those 
that woe 12 them, but forswearing the companie of those that write 
them, giving no occasion either by wanton lookes, unseemely ges- 
tures, unadvised speach, or any uncomly behaviour, of lightnesse, 
or liking. Contrarie to the custome of many countries, where 
filthie wordes are accompted to savour of a fine witt'e, broade 
speach, of a bolde courage, wanton glaunces, of a sharpe eye 
sight, wicked deedes, of a comely gesture, all vaine delights, of a 
right curteous curtesie. 

And yet are they not in England presise [precise], but wary, 
disdainefull to conferre, 13 but careful [fearefull] to offencle, not 
without remorse where they perceive trueth, but without replying 
where they suspect tre[a]cherie, when as among other nations, 
there is no tale so lothsome to chast eares but it is heard with 
great sport, and aunswered with great speade [speede] . 

Is it not then a shame, Ladyes, that that little Island shoulde be 
a myrrour to you, to Europe, to the whole worlde ? 

Where is the temperance you professe when wine is more com- 
mon then water ? . . . where the modestie when your mirth turn- 
eth to uncleanes, uncleanes to shamelesnes, shamelesnesse to al 
sinfulnesse? Learne, Ladies, though late, yet at length, that the 
chiefest title of honour in earth, is to give all honour to him that 
is in heaven, that the greatest braverie in this worlde, is to be 
burning lampes in the worlde to come, that the clearest beautie 
in this life, is to be amiable to him that shall give life eternall : 
Looke in the Glasse of England, too bright I feare me for your 
eyes, what is there in your sex that they have not, and what that 
you should not have ? 

* So Arber's text. 12 woo. 13 converse. 



8 JOHN LYLY. 

They are in prayer devoute, in bravery humble, in beautie chast, 
in feasting temperate, in affection wise, in mirth modest, in al[l] 
their actions though courtlye, bicause woemen, yet Aungels 
[Angels], bicause virtuous. 

Ah good Ladies, good, I say, for that I love you, I would yee 
[you] could a little abate that pride of your stomackes, that loose- 
nesse of minde, that lycentious behaviour which I have seene in you, 
with no smal[l] sorrowe, and can-not remedy with continuall sighes. 

They in England pray when you play, sowe when you sleep, 
fast when you feast, and weepe for their sins, when you laugh at 
your sensualitie. 

They frequent the Church to serve God, you to see gallants; 
they deck them-selves for cle[a]nlinesse, you for pride ; . . . they 
refraine wine, bicause they fear to take too much, you bicause 
you can take no more. Come, Ladies, with teares I call you, 
looke in this Glasse, repent your sins past, refrain your present 
vices, abhor vanities to come, say thus with one voice, we can see 
our faults only in the English Glasse ; a Glas of grace to them, 
of grief to you, to them in the steed of righteousnes, to you in 
place of repentance. The Lords and Gentlemen in ye [that] 
court are also an example for all others to fol[l]ow, true tipes 
[types] of nobility, the only stay and staf [fe] to [of] honor, brave 
courtiers, stout soldiers, apt to revell in peace, and ryde in warre. 
In fight fearce [fierce], not dreading death, in friendship firme, 
not breaking promise, curteous to all that deserve well, cruell to 
none that deserve ill. Their adversaries they trust not, that shew- 
eth their wisdome, their enimies they feare not, that argueth their 
courage. They are not apt to proffer injuries, nor fit to take any : 
loth to pick quarrels, but longing to revenge them. 

Active they are in all things, whether it be to wrestle in the 
games of Olympia, or to fight at Barriers in Palestra, able to carry 
as great burthens as Milo, of strength to throwe as byg stones as 
Tur-nus, and what not that eyther man hath done or may do, 
worthye of such Ladies, and none but they, and Ladies willing to 
have such Lordes, and none but such. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 9 

This is a Glasse for our youth in Greece, for your young ones in 
Italy, the English Glasse ; behold it, Ladies and Lordes, and all 
that eyther meane to have pietie, use braverie, encrease beautie, 
or that desire temperancie, chastitie, witte, wisdome, valure, or 
any thing that may delight your selves, or deserve praise of 
others. 

But another sight there is in my Glasse, which maketh me sigh 
for griefe I can-not shewe it, and yet had I rather offend in dero- 
gating 11 from my Glasse, then my good will. 

Blessed is that Land that hath all commodities to encrease the 
common wealth, happye is that Islande that hath wise counsailours 
to maintaine it, vertuous courtiers to beautifie it, noble Gentle- 
menne to advance it, but to have suche a Prince to governe it as 
is their Soveraigne queene, I know not whether I should thinke the 
people to be more fortunate, or the Prince famous, whether their 
felicitie be more to be had in admiration, that have such a ruler, 
or hir vertues to be honoured, that hath such royaltie : for such 
is their estat[e] ther[e] that I am enforced to think that every 
day is as lucky to the Englishmen, as the sixt day of Februarie 
hath beene to the Grecians. 

But I see you gase untill I shew this Glasse, which you having 
once seene, will make you giddy : Oh Ladies I know not when to 
begin, nor where to ende : for the more I go about to expresse 
the brightnes, the more I finde mine eyes bleared ; the neerer I 
desire to come to it, the farther I se[e]me from it, not unlike unto 
Simonides, who being curious to set downe what God was, the 
more leysure he tooke, the more loth hee was to meddle, saying 
that in thinges above reach, it was easie to catch a straine, 15 but 
impossible to touch a Star : and ther[e]fore scarse tollerable to 
poynt at that which one can never pull at. When Alexander had 
commaunded that none shoulde paint him but Appelles, none 
carve him but Lysippus, none engrave him but Pirgotales \Pergo- 
tales], Parrhasius framed a Table squared, everye way twoo hun- 

14 detracting. 15 to overexert one's self. 



10 JOHN LYLY. 

i 
dred foote, which in the borders he trimmed with fresh coulours, 
and limmed with fine golde, leaving all the other roume [roome] 
with-out knotte or lyne, which table he presented to Alexander, 
who, no lesse mervailing at the bignes, then at the barenes, 
demaunded to what ende he gave him a frame with-out face, 
being so naked, and with-out fashion, being so great. Parrhasius 
aunswered him, let it be lawful for Parrhasius, O Alexander, to 
shew a Table wherin he would paint Alexander, if it were not 
unlawfull, and for others to square Timber, though Lysippus carve 
it, and for all to cast brasse though Pirgoleles [Pergoteles] ingrave 
it. Alexander, perceiving the good minde of Parrhasius, par- 
doned his boldnesse, and preferred 16 his arte : yet enquyring why 
hee framed the table so bygge, he aunswered that hee thought that 
frame to bee but little enough for his Picture, when the whole 
worlde was to little for his personne, saying that Alexander must 
as well be praysed, as paynted, and that all hys victoryes and ver- 
tues were not for to bee drawne in the Compasse of a Sygnette, 
[Signet] but in a fielde. 

This aunswer Alexander both lyked and rewarded, insomuch 
that it was lawful ever after for Parrhasius both to praise that 
noble king and to paint him. 

In the like manner I hope that, though it be not requisite 
that any should paynt their Prince in England, that can-not suf- 
ficiently perfect hir, yet it shall not be thought rashnesse or rude- 
nesse for Euphues to frame a table for Elizabeth, though he 
presume not to paynt hir. Let Appelles shewe his fine arte, 
Euphues will manifest his faythfull heart, the one can but prove 
his conceite to blase his cunning, the other his good will to 
grinde his coulours : hee that whetteth the tooles is not to bee 
misliked, though hee can-not carve the Image ; the worme that 
spinneth the silke is to be esteemed, though she cannot worke 
the sampler ; they that fell tymber for shippes, are not to be 
blamed, bicause they can-not builde shippes. 

16 commended. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 11 

He that caryeth morter furthereth the building, though hee be 
no expert Mason ; hee that diggeth the garden is to be considered, 
though he cannot treade the knottes 17 ; the Gold-smythes boye 
must have his wages for blowing the fire, though he can-not fashion 
the Jewell. 

Then, Ladyes, I hope poore Euphues shall not bee reviled, 
though hee deserve not to bee rewarded. I will set downe this 
Elizabeth, as neere as I can : And it may be that, as the Venus of 
Appelles not finished, the Tindarides of Nichomachus not ended, 
the Medea of Timomachus not perfected, the table of Parrhasius 
not couloured, brought greater desire to them to consumate them, 
and to others to see them : so the Elizabeth of Euphues, being 
but shadowed for others to vernish, but begun for others to ende, 
but drawen with a blacke coale, for others to blaze with a bright 
coulour, may worke either a desire in Euphues heereafter, if he 
live, to ende it, or a minde in those that are better able to amende 
it, or in all (if none can worke it) a wil[l] to wish it. In the 
meane season I say as Zeuxis did when he had drawen the picture 
of Atalanta, more wil envie me then imitate me, and not com- 
mende it though they cannot amende it. But I come to my 
England. 

There were for a long time civill wars in this [the] countrey, 
by reason of several claymes to the Crowne, betweene the two 
famous and noble houses of Lancaster and Yorke, either of them 
pretending to be of the royall bloude, which caused them both to 
spende their vitall bloode ; these jarres continued long, not with- 
out great losse, both to the Nobilitie and Communaltie, who, 
joyning not in one, but divers parts, turned the realme to great 
ruine, having almost destroyed their countrey before they coulde 
annoynt a king. 

But the lyving God, who was loath to oppresse England, at last 
began to represse injuries, and to give an ende by mercie to those 
that could finde no ende of malice, nor looke for any ende of mis- 

17 lay out the garden plots. 



12 JOHN LYLY. 

chiefe. So tender a care hath he alwaies had of that England as 
of a new Israel, his chosen and peculier [peculiar] people. 

This peace began by a marriage solemnized by Gods speciall 
providence betweene Henrie Earle of Ritchmond, heire of the 
house of Lancaster, and Elizabeth, daughter to Edward the 
fourth, the undoubted issue and heire of the house of Yorke, 
where by (as they tearme it) the redde Rose and the white were 
united and joyned together. Out of these Roses sprang two noble 
buddes, Prince Arthur and Henrie, the eldest dying without issue, 
the other of most famous memorie leaving behind him three chil- 
dren, Prince Edwarde, the Ladie Marie, the Ladie Elizabeth. 
King Edwarde lived not long, which coulde never for that Realme 
have lived too long, but sharpe frostes bite forwarde springes, 
Easterly windes blasteth towardly 18 blossoms, cruell death spareth 
not those which we our selves living cannot spare. 

The elder sister, the Princes Marie, succeeded as next heire to 
the crowne, and as it chaunced nexte heire to the grave, touching 
whose life I can say little bicause I was scarce borne, and what 
others say, of 19 me shalbe forborne. 

This Queene being deseased [deceased], Elizabeth, being of the 
age of xxii. yeares, of more beautie then honour, and yet of more 
honour then any earthly creature, was called from a prisoner to 
be a Prince, from the castell [Castle] to the crowne, from the 
feare of loosing hir heade, to be supreame heade. And here, 
Ladies, it may be you wil[l] move a question, why this noble 
Ladie was either in daunger of death, or cause of distresse, which, 
had you thought to have passed in silence, I would notwithstand- 
ing have reveiled [revealed]. 

This Ladie all the time of hir sisters reigne was kept close, as 
one that tendered 20 not those proceedings which were contrarie 
to hir conscience, who, having divers enemies, endured many 
crosses, but so patiently as in hir deepest sorrow, she would rather 
sigh for the libertie of the gospel then hir own freedome. Suffer- 

18 early. 19 by. 20 favored. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 13 

ing her inferiours to triumph over hir, hir foes to threaten hir, hir 
dissembling friends to undermine hir, learning in all this miserie 
onely the patience that Zeno taught Eretricus, to beare and for- 
beare, never seeking revenge but with good Lycurgus, to loose hir 
owne eye, rather then to hurt an others eye. 

But being nowe placed in the seate royall, she first of [all] estab- 
lished religion, banished poperie, advaunced the worde, that before 
was so much defaced, who having in hir hande the sworde to 
revenge, used rather bountifully to reward : Being as farre from 
rigour when shee might have killed, as hir enemies were from 
honestie when they coulde not, giving a general pardon, when she 
had cause to use perticuler punishments, preferring the name of 
pittie before the remembrance of perils, thinking no revenge more 
princely, then to spare when she might spill, 21 to staye when she 
might strike, to profer to save with mercie, when she might have 
destroyed with justice. Heere is the clemencie worthie commen- 
dation and admiration, nothing inferiour to the gentle disposition 
of Aristides, who after his exile did not so much as note them that 
banished him, saying with Alexander that there can be nothing 
more noble then to doe well to those that deserve yll. 

This mightie and merciful Queene, having many bils [billes] of 
private persons, yat sought before time to betray hir, burnt them 
all, resembling Julius Ccesar, who, being presented with ye like 
complaints of his commons, threw them into ye fire, saying that 
he had rather not knowe the names of rebels, then have occasion 
to reveng[e], thinking it better to be ignorant of those that hated 
him, then to be angrie with them. 

This clemencie did hir majestie not onely shew at hir comming 
to the crowne, but also throughout hir whole governement, when 
she hath spared to shedde their bloods that sought to spill hirs, 
not racking the lawes to extrerriftie, but mittigating the rigour with 
mercy, insomuch as it may be said of yat royal Monarch as it was 
of Antonius, surnamed ye godly Emperour, who raigned many 

21 destroy. 



14 JOHN LYLY. 

yeares with-out the effusion of blood. What greater vertue can 
there be in a Prince then mercy, what greater praise then to abate 
the edge which she should wette, 22 to pardon where she shoulde 
punish, to rewarde where she should revenge. 

I my selfe being in England, when hir majestie was for hir 
recreation in hir Barge upon ye Thames, hard of a Gun that was 
shotte off, though of the partie unwittingly, yet to hir noble person 
daungerously, which fact she most graciously pardoned, accepting 
a just excuse before a great amends, taking more griefe for hir 
poore Bargeman that was a little hurt, then care for hir selfe that 
stoode in greatest hasarde : O rare example of pittie, O singuler 
spectacle of pietie. 

Divers besides have there beene which by private conspiracies, 
open rebellions, close wiles, cruel witchcraftes, have sought to ende 
hir life, which saveth all their lives, whose practises by the divine 
providence of the almightie have ever been disclosed, insomuch 
that he hath kept hir safe in the whales belly when hir subjects 
went about to throwe hir into the sea, preserved hir in the [hotte] 
hoat Oven, when hir enimies encreased the fire, not suffering a 
haire to [fall] from hir, much lesse any harme to fasten uppon hir. 
These injuries and treasons of hir subjects, these policies and 
undermining of forreine nations so little moved hir, yat she 
woulde often say, Let them knowe that, though it bee not lawfull 
for them to speake what they list, yet it is [is it] lawfull for us to 
doe with them what we list, being alwayes of that mercifull minde 
which was in Theodosius, who wished rather that he might call the 
deade to life, then put the living to death, saying with Augustus, 
when she shoulde set hir hande to any condempnation, I woulde 
to God we could not writfe]. Infinite were the ensamples that 
might be alledged, and almost incredible, whereby shee hath shewed 
hir selfe a Lambe in meekenesse, when she had cause to be a Lion 
in might, proved a Dove in favour, when she was provoked to be 
an Eagle in fiercenesse, requiting injuries with benefits, revenging 

22 whet. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 15 

grudges with gifts, in highest majestie bearing the lowest minde, 
forgiving all that sued for mercie, and forgetting all that deserved 
Justice. 

O divine nature, O heavenly nobilitie, what thing can there 
more be required in a Prince then in greatest power to shewe 
greatest patience, in chiefest glorye to bring forth chiefest grace, 
in abundaunce of all earthlye pom[p]e to manifest aboundaunce 
of all heavenlye pietie : O fortunate England that hath such a 
Queene, ungratefull, if thou praye not for hir, wicked, if thou do 
not love hir, miserable, if thou loose hir. 

Heere, Ladies, is a Glasse for all Princes to behold, that being 
called to dignitie, they use moderation, not might, tempering the 
severitie of the lawes with the mildnes of love, not executing al[l] 
they wil, but shewing what they may. Happy are they, and onely 
they, that are under this glorious and gracious Sovereigntie \ inso- 
much that I accompt all those abjects, that be not hir subjectes. 

But why doe I treade still in one path, when I have so large a 
fielde to walke, or lynger about one flower, when I have manye to 
gather : where-in I resemble those that, beeinge delighted with the 
little brooke, neglect the fountaines head, or that painter that, 
being curious to coulour Cupids Bow, forgot to paint the string. 

As this noble Prince is endued with mercie, pacience and mod- 
eration, so is she adourned with singuler beautie and chastitie, 
excelling in the one Venus, in the other Vesta. Who knoweth 
not how rare a thing it is Ladies to match virginitie with 
beautie, a chast[e] minde with an amiable face, divine cogitations 
with a comelye countenaunce ? But suche is the grace bestowed 
uppon this earthlye Goddesse, that, having the beautie that myght 
allure all Princes, she hath the chastitie also to refuse all, account- 
ing [accompting] it no lesse praise to be called a Virgin, then to 
be esteemed a Venus, thinking it as great honour to bee found 
chastfe], as thought amiable. Where is now Electra the chastfe] 
Daughter of Agamemnon ? Where is La/a, that renoumed Virgin ? 
Wher is Aemilia, that through hir chastitie wrought wonders, in 
maintayning continuall fire at the Altar of Vestal Where is 



16 JOHN LYLY. 

Claudia, that to manifest hir virginitie set the Shippe on float 
with hir finger, that multitudes could not remove by force? 
Where is Tuscia, one of the same order, that brought to passe 
no lesse mervailes by carrying water in a sive, not shedding one 
drop from Tiber to the Temple of Vesta ? If Virginitie have such 
force, then what hath this chast Virgin Elizabeth don[e], who by 
the space of twenty and odde yeares with continuall peace against 
all policies, with sundry myracles contrary to all hope, hath gov- 
erned that noble Island? Against whom neyther forre[i]n force, 
nor civill fraude, neyther discorde at home, nor conspiracies 
abroad, could prevaile. What greater mervaile hath happened 
since the beginning of the world, then for a young and tender 
Maiden to govern strong and valiaunt menne, then for a Virgin to 
make the whole worlde, if not to stand in awe of hir, yet to honour 
hir, yea and to live in spight of all those that spight hir, with hir 
sword in the she[a]th, with hir armour in the Tower, with hir soul- 
diers in their gownes, insomuch as hir peace may be called more 
blessed then the quiet raigne of Numa Pompilius, in whose gov- 
ernment the Bees have made their hives in the soldiers hel- 
mettes? Now is the Temple of Janus removed from Rome to 
England, whose dore hath not bene opened this twentie yeares, 
more to be mervayled at then the regiment 23 of Debora, who 
ruled twentie yeares with religion, or Semeriamis \Semyramis~\y 
that governed long with power, or Zenobia, that reigned six yeares 
in prosperitie. 

This is the onelye myracle that virginitie ever wrought, for a 
little Island environed round about with warres to stande in peace, 
for the walles of Fraunee to burne, and the houses of England to 
freese, for all other nations eyther with civile [cruell] sworde to 
bee devided, or with forren foes to be invaded, and that countrey 
neyther to be molested with broyles in their owne bosomes, nor 
threatned with blasts of other borderers : But alwayes though not 
laughing, yet looking through an Emeraud at others jarres. 

23 rule. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 17 

Their fields have beene sowne with corne, straungers theirs 
pytched with Camps ; they have their men reaping their harvest, 
when others are mustring in their harneis ; they use their peeces 
to fowle for pleasure, others their Calivers 24 for feare of perrill. 
O blessed peace, oh happy Prince, O fortunate people : The lyv- 
ing God is onely the English God, wher[e] he hath placed peace, 
which bryngeth all plentie, annoynted a Virgin Queene, which 
with a wand ruleth hir owne subjects, and with hir worthinesse 
winneth the good willes of straungers, so that she is no lesse gra- 
tious among hir own, then glorious to others, no lesse loved of hir 
people, then merva[i]led at of other nations. 

This is the blessing that Christ alwayes gave to his people, 
peace : This is the curse that hee giveth to the wicked, there 
shall bee no peace to the ungodlye : This was the onely salutation 
hee used to his Disciples, peace be unto you : And therefore is hee 
called the GOD of love, and peace in hollye [holy] writte. 

In peace was the Temple of the Lorde buylt by Salomon, Christ 
would not be borne untill there were peace through- out the whole 
worlde, this was the only thing that Esechias prayed for, let there 
be trueth and peace, O Lorde, in my dayes. All which examples 
doe manifestly prove, that ther[e] can be nothing given of God to 
man more notable than peace. 

This peace hath the Lorde continued with great and unspeake- 
able goodnesse amonge his chosen people of England. How 
much is that nation bouncle to such a Prince, by whome they 
enjoye all benefits of peace, having their barnes full, when others 
famish, their cof[f]ers stuffed with gold, when others have no 
silver, their wives without daunger, when others are defamed, their 
daughters chast, when others are defloured, theyr houses furnished, 
when others are fired, where they have all thinges for superfluitie, 
others nothing to sustaine their neede. This peace hath God 
given for hir vertues, pittie, moderation, virginitie, which peace, 
the same God of peace continue for his names sake. 

24 muskets. 



18 JOHN LYLY. 

Touching the beautie of this Prince, hir countenaunce, hir per- 
sonage, hir majestie, I can-not thinke that it may be sufficiently 
commended, when it can-not be too much mervailed at : So that 
I am constrained to saye as Praxitiles did, when hee beganne to 
paynt Venus and hir Sonne, who doubted whether the worlde 
could affoorde coulours good enough for two such fayre faces, and 
I whether our tongue canne yeelde wordes to blase that beautie, 
the perfection where-of none canne imagine, which seeing it is so, 
I must doe like those that want a cleere sight, who being not able 
to discerne the Sunne in the Skie are inforced to beholde it in 
the water. Zeuxis having before him fiftie faire virgins of Sparta 
where by to draw one amiable Venus, said that fiftie more fayrer 
than those coulde not minister sufficient beautie to shewe the 
Godesse of beautie ; therefore being in dispaire either by art to 
shadow hir, or by imagination to comprehend hir, he drew in a 
table a faire temple, the gates open, and Venus going in, so as 
nothing coulde be perceived but hir backe, wherein he used such 
cunning that Appelles himselfe seeing this worke, wished yat Venus 
woulde turne hir face, saying yat if it were in all partes agreeable 
to the backe, he woulde become apprentice to Zeuxis, and slave 
to Venus. In the like manner fareth it with me, for having all the 
Ladyes in Italy more than fiftie hundered, whereby to coulour 
Elizabeth, I must say with Zeuxis, that as many more will not 
suffise, and therefore in as great an agonie paint hir court with hir 
back towards you, for yat I cannot by art portraie hir beautie, 
wherein though I want the skill to doe it as Zeuxis did, yet v[i]ew- 
ing it narrowly, and comparing it wisely, you all will say yat if hir 
face be aunswerable to hir backe, you wil[l] like my handi-crafte, 
and become hir handmaides. In the meane season I leave you 
gazing untill she turne hir face, imagining hir to be such a one as 
nature framed to yat end, that no art should imitate, wherein shee 
hath proved hir selfe to bee exquisite, and painters to be Apes. 

This Beautifull moulde when I behelde to be endued with chas- 
titie, temperance, mildnesse, and all other good giftes of nature 
(as hereafter shall appeare) when I saw hir to surpasse all in 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 19 

beautie, and yet a virgin, to excell all in pietie, and yet a prince, 
to be inferiour to none in all the liniaments of the bodie, and yet 
superiour to every one in all giftes of the minde, I beegan thus to 
pray, that as she hath lived fortie yeares a virgin in great majestie, 
so she may lyve fourescore yeares a mother with great joye, that 
as with hir we have long time hadde peace and plentie, so by hir 
we may ever have quietnesse and aboundaunce, wishing this even 
from the bottome of a heart that wisheth well to England, though 
feareth ill, that either the world may ende before she dye, or she 
lyve to see hir childrens children in the world : otherwise, how 
tickle 25 their state is yat now triumph, upon what a twist they hang 
that now are in honour, they yat lyve shal see which I to thinke 
on sigh. But God for his mercies sake, Christ for his merits sake, 
ye holy Ghost for his names sake, graunt to that realme comfort 
without anye ill chaunce, and the Prince they have without any 
other chaunge, that ye longer she liveth the sweeter she may 
smell, lyke the bird Ibis, that she maye be triumphant in victories 
lyke the Palme tree, fruitfull in hir age lyke the Vyne, in all ages 
prosperous, to all men gratious, in all places glorious : so that 
there be no ende of hir praise, untill the ende of all flesh. 

Thus did I often talke with my selfe, and wishe with mine whole 
soule [heart]. 

What should I talke of hir sharpe wit, excellent wisdome, exqui- 
site learning, and all other qualities of the minde, where-in she 
seemeth as farre to excell those that have bene accompted singu- 
lar, as the learned have surpassed those that have bene thought 
simple ? 

In questioning not inferiour to Nicaulia the Queene of Saba, 
that did put so many hard doubts to Salomon, equall to Nico- 
strata in the Greeke tongue, who was thought to give precepts for 
the better perfection : more learned in the Latine then Amala- 
sunta : passing Aspasia in Philosophic, who taught Pericles : 
exceeding in judgement Themistoclea, who instructed Pithagoras, 

25 unsteady. 



20 JOHN LYLY. 

adde to these qualyties those that none of these had, the French 
tongue, the Spanish, the Italian, not meane in every one, but 
excellent in all, readyer to correct escapes 20 in those languages, 
then to be controlled, fitter to teach others, then learne of anye, 
more able to adde new rules, then to err in ye olde : Insomuch 
as there is no Embassadour that commeth into hir court, but she 
is willing and able both to understand his message, and utter hir 
minde, not lyke unto ye Kings of Assiria, who aunswerefd] Em- 
bassades by messengers, while they themselves either dally in 
sinne, or snort in sleepe. Hir godly zeale to learning, with hir 
great skil, hath bene so manifestly approved, yat I cannot tell 
whether she deserve more honour for hir knowledge, or admiration 
for hir curtesie, who in great pompe hath twice directed hir Prog- 
resse unto the Universities, with no lesse joye to the Students then 
glory to hir State. Where, after long and solempne disputations 
in Law, Phisicke, and Divinitie, not as one we[a]ried with Schol- 
lers arguments, but wedded to their orations, when every one 
feared to offend in length, she in hir own person, with no lesse 
praise to hir Majestie, then delight to hir subjects, with a wise and 
learned conclusion, both gave them thankes, and put selfe 27 to 
paines. O noble patterne of a princelye minde, not like to ye 
kings of Persia, who in their progresses did nothing els but cut 
stickes to drive away the time, nor like ye delicate lives of the 
Sybarites, who would not admit any Art to be exercised within 
their citie, yat might make ye least noyse. Hir wit so sharp, that 
if I should repeat the apt aunsweres, ye subtil questions, ye fine 
speaches, ye pithie sentences, which on ye sodain she hath uttered, 
they wold rather breed admiration then credit. But such are ye 
gifts yat ye living God hath indued hir with-all, that looke in what 
Arte or Language, wit or learning, vertue or beau tie, any one hath 
particularly excelled most, she onely hath generally exceeded every 
one in al, insomuch that there is nothing to bee added, that either 
man would wish in a woman, or God doth give to a creature. 

26 mistakes. 27 herself : perhaps hir omitted in Arber's text. 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 21 

I let passe hir skill in Musicke, hir knowledgfe] in al[l] ye other 
sciences, when as I feare least by my simplicity I shoulde make 
them lesse then they are, in seeking to shewe howe great they are, 
unlesse I were praising hir in the gallerie of Olympia, where gyv- 
ing forth one worde, I might heare seven. 

But all these graces 28 although they be to be wondered at, yet hir 
politique governement, hir prudent counsaile, hir zeale to religion, 
hir clemencie to those that submit, hir stoutnesse to those that 
threaten, so farre exceede all other vertues that they are more 
easie to be mervailed at then imitated. 

Two and twentie yeares hath she borne the sword with such 
justice that neither offenders coulde complaine of rigour, nor the 
innocent of wrong, yet so tempered with mercie, as malefactours 
have beene sometimes pardoned upon hope of grace, and the 
injured requited to ease their griefe, insomuch that in ye whole 
course of hir glorious raigne, it coulde never be saide that either 
the poore were oppressed without remedie, or the guiltie repressed 
without cause, bearing this engraven in hir noble heart, that justice 
without mercie were extreame injurie, and pittie without equitie 
plaine partialitie, and that it is as great tyranny not to mitigate 
Laws as iniquitie to breake them. 

Hir care for the flourishing of the Gospell hath wel appeared, 
when as neither the curses of the Pope, (which are blessings to 
good people) nor the threatenings of kings, (which are perillous 
to a Prince) nor the perswasions of Papists (which are Honny to 
the mouth) could either feare 29 hir, or allure hir, to violate the 
holy league contracted with Christ, or to maculate the blood of 
the aunciente Lambe, whiche is Christ. But alwayes constaunt in 
the true fayth, she hath to the exceeding joye of hir subjectes, to 
the unspeakeable comforte of hir soule, to the great glorye of God, 
establyshed that religion, the mayntenance where- of shee rather 
seeketh to confirme by fortitude, then leave off for feare, knowing 
that there is nothing that smelleth sweeter to the Lorde then a 

28 No predicate for this subject. 29 frighten. 



22 JOHN LYLY. 

sounde spirite, which neyther the hostes of the ungodlye, nor the 
horror of death, can eyther remo[o]ve or move. 

This Gospell with invincible courage, with rare constancie, with 
hotte zeale shee hath maintained in hir owne countries with-out 
chaunge, and defended against all kingdomes that sought chaunge, 
in-somuch that all nations rounde about hir, threatninge alteration, 
shaking swordes, throwing fyre, menacing famyne, murther, destruc- 
tion, desolation, shee onely hath stoode like a Lampe [Lambe] on 
the toppe of a hill, not fearing the Wastes of the sharpe winds, but 
trusting in his providence that rydeth uppon the winges of the 
foure windes. Next followeth the love shee beareth to hir sub- 
jectes, who no lesse tendereth them then the apple of hir owne 
eye, shewing hir selfe a mother to the affjflicted, a Phisition to 
the sicke, a Sovereigne and mylde Governesse to all. 

Touchinge hir Magnanimitie, hir Majestie, hir Estate royall, 
there was neyther Alexander, nor Galba the Emperour, nor any 
that might be compared with hir. 

This is she that resembling the noble Queene of Navarr\e\ 
useth the Marigolde for hir flower, which at the rising of the Sunne 
openeth hir leaves, and at the setting shutteth them, referring all 
hir actions and endevours to him that ruleth the Sunne. This is 
that Ccesar that first bound the Crocodile to the Palme tree, bri- 
dling those that sought to raine [rayne] hir : This is that good 
Pelican that to feede hir people spareth not to rend hir owne per- 
sonne : This is that mightie Eagle, that hath throwne dust into the 
eyes of the Hart, that went about to worke destruction to hir 
subjectes, into whose winges although the blinde Beetle would 
have crept, and so being carryed into hir nest, destroyed hir young 
ones, yet hath she with the vertue of hir fethers, consumed that 
flye in his owne fraud. 

She hath exiled the Swallowe that sought to spoyle the Gras- 
hopper, and given bytter Almondes to the ravenous Wolves that 
ende[a]vored to devoure the silly Lambes, burning even with the 
breath of hir mouth like ye princ[e]ly Stag, the serpents yat wer[e] 
engendred by the breath of the huge Elephant, so that now all hir 



EUPHUES AND HIS ENGLAND. 23 

enimies are as whist 30 as the bird Attagen, who never singeth any 
tune after she is taken, nor they beeing so overtaken. 

But whether do I wade, Ladyes, as one forgetting him-selfe, 
thinking to sound the dep[t]h of hir vertues with a few fadomes, 
when there is no bottome : For I knowe not how it commeth to 
passe that, being in this Laborinth, I may sooner loose my selfe 
then finde the ende. 

Beholde, Ladyes, in this Glasse a Queene, a woeman, a Virgin in 
all giftes of the bodye, in all graces of the minde, in all perfection 
of eyther, so farre to excell all men, that I know not whether I 
may thinke the place too badde for hir to dwell amonge men. 

To talke of other thinges in that Court, wer[e] to bring Egges 
after apples, or after the setting out of the Sunne, to tell a tale of 
a Shaddow. 

But this I saye, that all orTyces are looked to with great care, 
that vertue is embraced of 19 all, vice hated, religion daily encreased, 
manners reformed, that who so seeth the place there, will thinke 
it rather a Church for divine service, then a Court for Princes 
delight. 

This is the Glasse, Ladies, wher-in I woulde have you gase, 
wher-in I tooke my whole delight; imitate the Ladyes in England, 
amende your manners, rubbe out the wrinckles of the minde, and 
be not curious about the weams 31 in the face. As for their Eliz- 
abeth, sith 32 you can neyther sufficiently mervaile at hir, nor I prayse 
hir, let us all pray for hir, which is the onely duetie we can per- 
forme, and the greatest that we can proffer. 

Yours to commaund 

E up hues. 

30 still. 31 blemishes. 3 ' 2 since. 



II. 

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

(1554-1586.) 

AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE. 

[Written about 1581.] 

Sith l then Poetrie is of all humane learning the most auncient, 
and of most fatherly antiquitie, as from whence other learnings 
have taken theyr beginnings : sith it is so universall that no learned 
Nation dooth despise it, nor no barbarous Nation is without it : 
sith both Roman and Greek gave divine names unto it : the one 
of prophecying, the other of making. And that, indeede, that 
name of making is fit for him ■ considering that where as other 
Arts retaine themselves within their subject, and receive, as it 
were, their beeing from it : the Poet onely bringeth his owne stuffe, 
and dooth not learne a conceite 2 out of a matter, but maketh 
matter for a conceite : Sith neither his description, nor his ende, 
contayneth any evill, the thing described cannot be evill : Sith his 
effects be so good as to teach goodness and to delight the learners : 
Sith therein, (namely in morrall doctrine, the chiefe of all knowl- 
edges,) hee dooth not onely farre passe the Historian, but for 
instructing is well nigh comparable to the Philosopher : and for 
moving leaves him behind him : Sith the holy scripture (wherein 
there is no uncleannes) hath whole parts in it poeticall. And that 
even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it : Sith 
all his kindes are not onlie in their united formes, but in their 
severed dissections fully commendable, I think, (and think I 

1 since. 2 idea. 

24 



AN APOLOGIE FOR FOE TRIE. 25 

thinke rightly) the Lawrell crowne appointed for tryumphing Cap- 
taines doth worthilie (of al other 3 learnings) honor the Poets 
tryumph. But because wee have eares aswell as tongues, and 
that the lightest reasons that may be, will seeme to weigh greatly, 
if nothing be put in the counter-ballance : let us heare, and 
aswell as wee can, ponder what objections may bee made against 
this Arte, which may be worthy, eyther of yeelding, or answering. 

First truely I note, not onely in these Mysomousoi, Poet-haters, 
but in all that kinde of people, who seek a prayse by dispraysing 
others, that they doe prodigally spend a great many wandering 
wordes in quips and scofTes ; carping and taunting at each thing, 
which by styrring the Spleene, may stay the braine from a through 
beholding the worthines of the subject. 

Those kinde 3 of objections, as they are full of very idle easines, 

sith there is nothing of so sacred a majestie, but that an itching 

tongue may rubbe it selfe upon it : so deserve they no other 

answer, but in steed of laughing at the jest, to laugh at the jester. 

Wee know a playing wit can prayse the discretion of an Asse, the 

comfortablenes of being in debt, and the jolly commoditie 4 of 

beeing sick of the plague. So of the contrary side, if we will turne 

Ovids verse, __ , . . . ... 

Ut lateat virtus proximitate man? 

that good lye hid in the neerenesse of the evill : Agrippa will be 
as merry in shewing the vanitie of Science, as Erasmus was in 
commending of follie. Neyther shall any man or matter escape 
some touch of these smyling raylers. But for Erasmus and 
Agrippa, they had another foundation then the superficiall part 
would promise. Mary, these other pleasant Fault-finders, who 
wil correct the Verbe before they understande the Noune, and 
confute others knowledge before they confirme theyr owne : I 
would have them onely remember that scoffing commeth not of 

3 Common phrase in Elizabethan English, though incorrect. 

4 advantage. 

5 Possibly after Ovid's Art of Love, II. 662 : Et lateat vitium proximitate 
boni, And vice may lie hid in the nearness of good. 



26 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

wisedom. So as the best title in true English they gette with 
their merriments, is to be called good fooles : for so have our 
grave Fore-fathers ever termed that humorous kinde of jesters : 
but that which gyveth greatest scope to their scorning humors, 
is ryming and versing. It is already sayde (and as I think, trulie 
sayde) it is not ryming and versing that maketh Poesie. One may 
bee a Poet without versing, and a versifier without Poetry. But 
yet, presuppose it were inseparable (as indeede it seemeth Scaliger 
judgeth) truelie it were an inseparable commendation. For if 
Oratio, next to Ratio, Speech next to Reason, bee the greatest 
gyft bestowed upon mortalitie : that can not be praiselesse, which 
dooth most pollish that blessing of speech, which considers each 
word, not only (as a man may say) by his forcible qualitie, but by 
his best measured quantitie, carrying even in themselves a Har- 
monie : (without (perchaunce) Number, Measure, Order, Pro- 
portion, be in our time growne odious.) But lay a side the just 
prayse it hath, by beeing the onely fit speech for Musick, (Musick 
I say, the most divine striker of the sences :) thus much is un- 
doubtedly true, that if reading bee foolish without remembring, 
memorie being the onely treasurer of knowled[g]e, those words 
which are fittest for memory are likewise most convenient for 
knowledge. 

Now, that Verse farre exceedeth Prose in the knitting up of the 
memory, the reason is manifest. The words, (besides theyr delight 
which hath a great affinitie to memory,) beeing so set, as one 
word cannot be lost, but the whole worke failes : which accuseth 
it selfe, calleth the remembrance backe to it selfe, and so most 
strongly confirmeth it ; besides, one word so as it were begetting 
another, as be it in ryme or measured verse, by the former a man 
shall have a neere guesse to the follower : lastly, even they that 
have taught the Art of memory, have shewed nothing so apt for 
it as a certaine roome devided into many places well and thor- 
oughly knowne. Now, that hath the verse in effect perfectly : 
every word having his naturall seate, which seate must needes 
make the words remembred. But what needeth more in a thing 



AN A POLO G IE FOR POETRIE. 27 

so knowne to all men? who is it that ever was a scholler, that 
doth not carry away some verses of Virgill, Horace, or Cato, which 
in his youth he learned, and even to his old age serve him for 
howrely lessons? but the fitnes it hath for memory, is notably 
proved by all delivery of Arts : wherein for the most part, from 
Grammer, to Logick, Mathematick, Phisick, and the rest, the 
rules chiefely necessary to bee borne away are compiled in verses. 
So that, verse being in it selfe sweete and orderly, and beeing best 
for memory, the onely handle of knowledge, it must be in jest that 
any man can speake against it. Nowe then goe wee to the most 
important imputations laid to the poore Poets, for ought I can 
yet learne they are these, first, that there beeing many other more 
fruitefull knowledges, a man might better spend his tyme in them, 
then in this. Secondly, that it is the mother of lyes. Thirdly, 
that it is the Nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent 
desires : with a Syrens sweetness drawing the mind to the Ser- 
pents tayle of sinful fancy. And heerein especially Comedies give 
the largest field to erre, as Chaucer sayth : howe both in other 
Nations and in ours, before Poets did soften us, we were full of 
courage, given to martiall exercises j the pillars of manlyke liberty, 
and not lulled a sleepe in shady idlenes with Poets pastimes. 
And lastly, and chiefely, they cry out with an open mouth, as if 
they out shot Robin Hood, that Plato banished them out of hys 
Common-wealth. Truely, this is much, if there be much truth in 
it. First to the first : that a man might better spend his tyme, is 
a reason indeede : but it doth (as they say) but Petere princi- 
pium\- for if it be as I affirme, that no learning is so good as 
that which teacheth and mooveth to vertue ; and that none can 
both teach and move thereto so much as Poetry: then is the 
conclusion manifest that Incke and Paper cannot be to a more 
profitable purpose employed. And certainly, though a man should 
graunt their first assumption, it should followe (me thinkes) 
very unwillingly that good is not good, because better is better. 

6 Beg the question. 



28 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

But I still and utterly denye that there is sprong out of earth a 
more fruiteful knowledge. To the second therefore, that they 
should be the principall lyars ; I aunswere paradoxically, but 
truely, I thinke truely ; that of all Writers under the sunne, the 
Poet is the least lier : and though he would, as a Poet can scarcely 
be a Iyer, the Astronomer, with his cosen the Geometrician, can 
hardly escape, when they take upon them to measure the height 
of the starres. 

How often, thinke you, doe the Phisitians lye, when they aver 
things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great 
nomber of soules drown[e]d in a potion before they come to his 
Ferry ? And no lesse of the rest which take upon them to affirme. 
Now, for the Poet, he nothing affirm es, and therefore never lyeth. 
For, as I take it, to lye is to affirme that to be true which is false. 
So as the other Artists, and especially the Historian, affirming 
many things, can in the cloudy knowledge of mankinde hardly 
escape from many lyes. But the Poet (as I sayd before) never 
affirmeth. The Poet never maketh any circles about your imagi- 
nation, to conjure you to beleeve for true what he writes. Hee 
citeth not authorities of other Histories, but even for hys entry 
calleth the sweete Muses to inspire into him a good invention : in 
troth, not labouring to tell you what is, or is not, but what should 
or should not be : and therefore, though he recount things not 
true, yet because hee telleth them not for true, he lyeth not, 
without 7 we will say, that Nathan lyed in his speech before 
alledged to David. Which as a wicked man durst scarce say, so 
think I, none so simple would say that Esope lyed in the tales of 
his beasts : for who thinks that Esope writ it for actually true, 
were well worthy to have his name c[h]ronicled among the beastes 
hee writeth of. 

What childe is there that, comming to a Play, and seeing Thebes 
written in great Letters upon an olde doore, doth beleeve that it 
is Thebes ? If then, a man can arrive at that childs age, to know 

7 Use of without as conjunction, now incorrect. 



AN APOLOGIE FOR POETKIE. 29 

that the Poets persons and dooings are but pictures what should 
be, and not stories what have beene, they will never give the lye 
to things not affirmatively, but allegorically, and ngurativelie writ- 
ten. And therefore, as in Historie, looking for trueth, they goe 
away full fraught with falshood : so in Poesie, looking for fiction, 
they shal use the narration but as an imaginative groundplot of a 
profitable invention. 

But heereto is replyed, that the Poets gyve names to men 
they write of, which argueth a conceite of an actuall truth, and so, 
not being true, prooves a falshood. And doth the Lawyer lye 
then, when under the names of John a stile and John a makes, 
hee puts his case ? But that is easily answered. Theyr naming 
of men is but to make theyr picture the more lively, and not to 
builde any historie : paynting men, they cannot leave men narae- 
lesse. We see we cannot play at Chesse, but that wee must give 
names to our Chesse-men ; and yet mee thinks, hee were a very 
partiall Champion of truth, that would say we lyed for giving a 
peece of wood the reverend title of a Bishop. The Poet nameth 
Cyrus or Aeneas no other way than to shewe what men of theyr 
fames, fortunes, and estates, should doe. 

Their third is, how much it abuseth mens wit, trayning it to 
wanton sinfulnes, and lustfull love : for indeed that is the prin- 
cipal!, if not the onely, abuse I can heare alledged. They say, the 
Comedies rather teach, then reprehend, amorous conceits. They 
say, the Lirick is larded with passionate Sonnets. The Elegiack 
weepes the want of his mistresse. And that even to the Heroical, 
Cupid hath ambitiously climed. Alas, Love, I would thou couldest 
as well defende thy selfe, as thou canst offende others. I would 
those, on whom thou doost attend, could eyther put thee away, 
or yeelde good reason why they keepe thee. But grant love of 
beautie to be a beastlie fault, (although it be very hard, sith onely 
man, and no beast, hath that gyft, to discerne beauty.) Grant 
that lovely name of Love to deserve all hateful reproches : 
(although even some of my Maisters the Phylosophers, spent a 
good deale of their Lamp-oyle, in setting foorth the excellencie 



30 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

of it.) Grant, I say, what soever they wil have granted ; that 
not onely love, but lust, but vanitie, but (if they list) scurrilitie, 
possesseth many leaves of the Poets bookes : yet thinke I, when 
this is granted, they will finde theyr sentence may with good 
manners, put the last words foremost : and not say that Poetrie 
abuseth mans wit, but that mans wit abuseth Poetrie. 

For I will not denie but that mans wit may make Poesie, 
(which should be Eikastike* which some learned have denned, 
figuring foorth good things,) to be Phantastike* : which doth con- 
trariwise, infect the fancie with unworthy objects. As the Painter, 
that shoulde give to the eye eyther some excellent perspective, or 
some fine picture, fit for building or fortification : or contayning 
in it some notable example, as Abraham, sacrificing his sonne 
Isaack, Judith killing Holof ernes, David fighting with Goliah, may 
leave those, and please an ill-pleased eye, with wanton shewes of 
better hidden matters. But what, shall the abuse of a thing make 
the right use odious? Nay truely, though I yeeld that Poesie may 
not onely be abused, but that beeing abused, by the reason of his 
sweete charming force, it can doe more hurt than any other Armie 
of words : yet shall it be so far from concluding that the abuse 
should give reproch to the abused, that contrariwise it is a good 
reason, that whatsoever being abused, dooth most harme, beeing 
rightly used, (and upon the right use each thing conceiveth his 
title) doth most good. 

Doe wee not see the skill of Phisick, (the best rampire 10 to our 
often-assaulted bodies) beeing abused, teach poyson the most 
violent destroyer? Dooth not knowledge of Law, whose end is 
to even and right all things, being abused, grow the crooked fos- 
terer of horrible injuries ? Doth not (to goe to the highest) Gods 
word abused, breed heresie ? and his Name abused, become blas- 
phemie ? Truely, a needle cannot doe much hurt, and as truely, 
(with leave of Ladies be it spoken) it cannot doe much good. 
With a sword, thou maist kill thy Father, and with a sword thou 

8 representative or imitative. 9 imaginative. 10 defence. 



AN APOLOGIE FOR FOE TRIE. 31 

maist defende thy Prince and Country. So that, as in their 
calling Poets the Fathers of lyes, they say nothing : so in this 
theyr argument of abuse, they proove the commendation. 

They alledge heere-with, that before Poets beganne to be in 
price, our Nation hath set their harts delight upon action, and 
not upon imagination : rather doing things worthy to bee written, 
than writing things fitte to be done. What that before tyme was, 
I thinke scarcely Sphinx can tell : Sith no memory is so auncient 
that hath the precedence of Poetrie. And certaine it is, that in 
our plainest homelines, yet never was the Albion Nation without 
Poetrie. Mary, thys argument, though it bee leaveld against 
Poetrie, yet is it, indeed, a chaine-shot against all learning, or 
bookishnes, as they commonly tearme it. Of such minde were 
certaine Gothes, of whom it is written, that having in the spoile 
of a famous Citie, taken a fayre librarie : one hangman (bee-like 
fitte to execute the fruites of their wits) who had murthered a 
great number of bodies, would have set fire on it : no, sayde 
another, very gravely, take heede what you doe, for whyle they 
are busie about these toyes, wee shall with more leysure conquer 
their Countries. 

This indeede is the ordinary doctrine of ignorance, and many 
wordes sometymes I have heard spent in it : but because this 
reason is generally against all learning, aswell as Poetrie ; or 
rather, all learning but Poetry : because it were too large a digres- 
sion, to handle, or at least, to superfluous : (sith it is manifest, that 
all government of action, is to be gotten by knowledg, and knowl- 
edge best, by gathering many knowledges, which is, reading,) I 
onely with Horace, to him that is of that opinion, 

Jubeo stidtum esse libenter : u 

for, as for Poetrie it selfe, it is the freest from thys objection. For 
Poetrie is the companion of the Campes. 

11 Fid him be foolish willingly. Perhaps after Horace, Satires, 1. 1. 63: — 
jfnbeas miser um esse, libenter 
Quatenus id facit. 



32 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

I dare undertake, Orlando Furioso, or honest King Arthur, will 
never displease a Souldier : but the quiddity of Ens, and Prima 
materia™ will hardely agree with a Corslet : and therefore, as I 
said in the beginning, even Turks and Tartares are delighted 
with Poets. Homer, a Greek, florished before Greece florished. 
And if to a slight conjecture, a conjecture may be opposed : truly 
it may seeme that, as by him their learned men tooke almost their 
first light of knowledge, so their active men received their first 
motions of courage. Onlie Alexa?iders example may serve, who by 
Plutarch is accounted of such vertue that Fortune was not his guide, 
but his foote-stoole : whose acts speake for him, though Plutarch 
did not : indeede, the Phcenix of warlike Princes. This Alex- 
ander left his Schoolemaister, living Aristotle, behinde him, but 
tooke deade Homer with him : he put the Philosopher Calisthenes 
to death, for his seeming philosophicall, indeed mutinous stub- 
burnnes. But the chiefe thing he ever was heard to wish for, was, 
that Homer had been alive. He well found, he received more 
braverie of minde bye the patterne of Achilles, then by hearing 
the definition of Fortitude : and therefore, if Cato misliked Fiilvius 
for carrying Ennius with him to the fielde, it may be aunswered, 
that if Cato misliked it, the noble Fiilvius liked it, or els he had 
not doone it : for it was not the excellent Cato Uticensis, (whose 
authority I would much more have reverenced,) but it was the 
former u : in truth, a bitter punisher of faults, but else a man that 
had never wel sacrificed to the Graces. Hee misliked and cryed 
out upon all Greeke learning, and yet being 80. yeeres olde, began 
to learne it. Be-like, fearing that Pluto understood not Latine. 
Indeede, the Romaine lawes allowed no person to be carried to 
the warres, but hee that was in the Souldiers role : and therefore, 
though Cato misliked his unmustered person, hee misliked not his 
worke. And if hee had, Scipio Nasica, judged by common con- 
sent the best Romaine, loved him. Both the other Scipio Brothers, 
who had by their vertues no lesse surnames then of Asia and 

12 being, and first substance, — philosophical terms. 13 i.e., Cato the Elder. 



AN APOLOGIE FOR FOE TRIE. 33 

Affrick, so loved him that they caused his body to be buried in 
their Sepulcher. So as Cato, his authoritie being but against his 
person, and that aunswered with so farre greater then himselfe, is 
heerein of no validitie. But now indeede my burthen is great ; 
now Plato his name is layde upon mee, whom I must confesse, of 
all Philosophers, I have ever esteemed most worthy of reverence, 
and with great reason : Sith of all Philosophers, he is the most 
poeticall. Yet if he will defile the Fountaine, out of which his 
flowing streames have proceeded, let us boldly examine with what 
reasons hee did it. First truly, a man might maliciously object 
that Plato, being a Philosopher, was a naturall enemie of Poets : 
for indeede, after the Philosophers had picked out of the sweete 
mysteries of Poetrie the right discerning true points of knowledge, 
they forthwith, putting it in method, and making a Schoole-arte 
of that which the Poets did onely teach by a divine delightfulnes, 
beginning to spurne at their guides, like ungrateful Prentises, were 
not content to set up shops for themselves, but sought by all 
meanes to discredit their maisters. Which by the force of delight 
beeing barred them, the lesse they could overthrow them, the more 
they hated them. For indeede, they found for Homer, seaven 
Cities strove who should have him for their citizen ; where many 
Citties banished Philosophers, as not fitte members to live among 
them. For onely repeating certaine of Euripides verses, many 
Athenians had their lyves saved of the Siraeusians : when the 
Athenians themselves thought many Philosophers unwoorthie to 
live. 

Certaine Poets, as Simonides, and Pindarus, had so prevailed 
with Hiero the first, that of a Tirant they made him a just King, 
where Plato could do so little with Dionisius, that he himselfe, of 
a Philosopher, was made a slave. But who should doe thus, I 
confesse, should requite the objections made against Poets, with 
like cavillation against Philosophers, as likewise one should doe, 
that should bid one read Ph&drus, or Symposium in Plato, or the 
discourse of love in Plutarch, and see whether any Poet doe 
authorize abominable filthines, as they doe. . . . But I honor philo- 



34 SIR PHI IIP SIDNEY. 

sophicall instructions, and blesse the wits which bred them : so as 
they be not abused, which is likewise stretched to Poetrie. 

S. Paule himselfe, (who yet for the credite of Poets alledgeth 
twise two Poets, and one of them by the name of a Prophet) set- 
teth a watch- word upon Philosophy, indeede upon the abuse. So 
dooth Plato, upon the abuse, not upon Poetrie. Plato found fault 
that the Poets of his time filled the worlde with wrong opinions of 
the Gods, making light tales of that unspotted essence ; and there- 
fore, would not have the youth depraved with such opinions. 
Heerin may much be said, let this suffice : the Poets did not 
induce such opinions, but dyd imitate those opinions already 
induced. For all the Greek stories can well testifie that the 
very religion of that time, stoode upon many, and many-fashioned 
Gods, not taught so by the Poets, but followed, according to their 
nature of imitation. Who list may reade in Plutarch the discourses 
of Lis, and Osiris, of the cause why Oracles ceased, of the divine 
providence : and see, whether the Theologie of that nation stood 
not upon such dreames, which the Poets indeed supersticiously 
observed, and truly, (sith they had not the light of Christ,) did 
much better in it then the Philosophers, who, shaking off super- 
stition, brought in Atheisme. Plato therefore, (whose authoritie 
I had much rather justly conster, 14 then unjustly resist,) meant not 
in general of Poets, in those words of which Julius Scaliger saith 
Qua authoritate, barbari quidam, atque hispidi, abuti velint, ad 
Poetas e republica exigendos : 15 but only meant, to drive out those 
wrong opinions of the Deitie (whereof now, without further law, 
Christianity hath taken away all the hurtful beliefe,) perchance 
(as he thought) norished by the then esteemed Poets. And a 
man need goe no further then to Plato himselfe, to know his mean- 
ing : who in his Dialogue called Ion, giveth high, and rightly divine 
commendation to Poetrie. So as Plato, banishing the abuse, not 
the thing, not banishing it, but giving due honor unto it, shall be 

14 construe. 

15 Which authority certain barbarous and rude persons wish to abuse in 
order to drive poets out of the republic. 



AN A POLO G IE FOR POETRIE. 35 

our Patron, and not our advcrsarie. For indeed I had much rather, 
(sith truly I may doe it) shew theyr mistaking of Plato, (under 
whose Lyons skin they would make an Asse-like braying against 
Poesie,) then goe about to overthrow his authority, whom the wiser 
a man is, the more just cause he shall find to have in admiration : 
especially, sith he attributeth unto Poesie more then my selfe doe \ 
namely, to be a very inspiring of a divine force, farre above mans 
wit j as in the aforenamed Dialogue is apparent. 

Of the other side, who would shew the honors, have been by 
the best sort of judgments granted them, a whole Sea of examples 
woulde present themselves. 16 Alexanders, Ccesars, Scipios, all 
favorers of Poets. Lelius, called the Romane Socrates, himselfe a 
Poet : so as part of Heautontimorumenon in Terence, was sup- 
posed to be made by him. And even the Greek Socrates, whom 
Apollo confirmed to be the onely wise man, is sayde to have spent 
part of his old tyme in putting Esops fables into verses. And 
therefore, full evill should it become his scholler Plato to put such 
words in his Maisters mouth against Poets. But what need more ? 
Aristotle writes the Arte of Poesie : and why if it should not be 
written? Plutarch teacheth the use to be gathered of them, and 
how if they should not be read ? And who reades Plutarchs eyther 
historie or philosophy, shall finde hee trymmeth both theyr gar- 
ments with gards of Poesie. But I list not to defend Poesie with 
the helpe of her underling, Historiography. Let it suffise that it 
is a fit soyle for prayse to dwell upon : and what dispraise may 
set upon it, is eyther easily over-come, or transformed into just 
commendation. So that, sith the excellencies of it may be so 
easily, and so justly confirmed, and the low-creeping objections, 
soone trodden downe ; it not being an Art of lyes, but of true 
doctrine : not of effeminatenes, but of notable stirring of courage : 
not of abusing mans witte, but of strengthning mans wit : not 
banished, but honored by Plato: let us rather plant more Laurels, 

16 Construction confused by omission of antecedent of who (to those) and 
subject of have been (that) . Elizabethan, and even later, writers, played sad 
havoc with relative constructions. 



36 SIX PHILIP SIDNEY. 

for to engarland our Poets heads, (which honor of beeing laureat, 
as besides them, onely tryumphant Captaines weare, is a sufficient 
authority to she we the price they ought to be had in,) then suffer 
the ill-favouring breath of such wrong-speakers once to blowe 
upon the cleere springs of Poesie. 

But sith I have runne so long a careere in this matter, me 
thinks, before I give my penne a fulle stop, it shalbe but a 
little more lost time to inquire why England (the Mother of 
excellent mindes,) should bee growne so hard a step-mother to 
Poets, who certainly in wit ought to passe all other : sith all onely 
proceedeth from their wit, being indeede makers cf themselves, 
not takers of others. How can I but exclaime, 

Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine Iczso. 11 

Sweete Poesie, that hath aunciently had Kings, Emperors, Sena- 
tors, great Captaines, such as besides a thousand others, David, 
Adrian, Sophocles, Germanicus, not onely to favour poets, but to 
be Poets. And of our neerer times, can present for her Patrons, 
a Robert, king of Sicil, the great king Francis of France, King 
James of Scotland. Such Cardinals as Bembus, and Bibiena. Such 
famous Preachers and Teachers, as Beza and Melancthon. So 
learned Philosophers, as Fracastorius and Scaliger. So great 
Orators, as Pontanus and Muretus. So piercing wits, as George 
Buchanan. So grave Counsellors, as besides many, but before 
all, that Hospitall of Fraunce : than whom, (I thinke) that Realme 
never brought forth a more accomplished judgement, more firmely 
builded upon vertue. I say these, with numbers of others, not 
onely to read others Poesies, but to poetise for others reading, 
that Poesie thus embraced in all other places, should onely finde 
in our time a hard welcome in England, I thinke the very earth 
lamenteth it, and therefore decketh our Soyle with fewer Laurels 
then it was accustomed. For heertofore, Poets have in England 
also florished. And which is to be noted, even in those times 

17 O Muse, tell me the causes by what offended deity, etc. — Virgil, sEneid, 
1.8. 



AN APOLOGTE FOR POETRIE. 37 

when the trumpet of Mars did sounde loudest. And now that 
an over-faint quietnes should seeme to strew the house for Poets, 
they are almost in as good reputation as the Mountibancks at 
Venice. Truly even that, as of the one side it giveth great praise 
to Poesie, which like Venus, (but to better purpose) hath rather 
be troubled in the net with Mars, then enjoy the homelie quiet 
of Vulcan : so serves it for a peece of a reason, why they are lesse 
gratefull to idle England, which nowe can scarce endure the payne 
of a pen. Upon this necessarily followeth that base men with 
servile wits undertake it : who think it inough, if they can be re- 
warded of the Printer. And so as Epaminondas is sayd, with the 
honor of his vertue, to have made an office, by his exercising it, 
which before was contemptible, to become highly respected : so 
these, no more but setting their names to it, by their owne disgrace- 
mines, disgrace the most gracefull Poesie. For now, . . . with- 
out any commission, they doe poste over the banckes of Helicon 
tyll they make the readers more weary than Poste-horses : while 
in the mean tyme, they 

Qtieis meliore Into finxit prcccordia Titan, 19, 

are better content to suppresse the outflowing 19 of their wit, then 
by publishing them to bee accounted Knights of the same order. 
But I, that before ever I durst aspire unto the dignitie, am ad- 
mitted into the company of the Paper-blurers, doe finde the very 
true cause of our wanting estimation, is want of desert : taking 
upon us to be Poets in despight of Pallas. Nowe, wherein we want 
desert, were a thanke-worthy labour to expresse : but if I knew, 
I should have mended my selfe. But I, as I never desired the 
title, so have I neglected the meanes to come by it. Onely over- 
mastered by some thoughts, I yeelded an inckie tribute unto them. 
Mary, they that delight in Poesie it selfe, should seeke to knowe 
what they doe, and how they doe ; and especially looke them- 
selves in an unflattering Glasse of reason, if they bee inclinable 

18 Whose hearts Titan has formed out of better clay. — Juvenal, XIV. 34. 

19 outflowings? 



33 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

unto it. For Poesie must not be drawne by the eares, it must bee 
gently led, or rather it must lead. Which was partly the cause 
that made the auncient learned affirme it was a divine gift, and 
no humaine skill : sith all other knowledges lie ready for any that 
hath strength of witte : A Poet, no industrie can make, if his owne 
Genius bee not carried unto it : and therefore is it an old Proverbe, 
Orator fit; Poeta nascitur. 20 Yet confesse I alwayes that as the 
firtilest ground must bee manured, so must the highest flying wit 
have a Dedalus to guide him. That Dedalus, they say, both in 
this, and in other, hath three wings, to beare it selfe up into the 
ayre of due commendation : that is, Arte, Imitation, and Exercise. 
But these, neyther artificiall rules, nor imitative patternes, we much 
cumber our selves withall. Exercise indeede wee doe, but that 
very fore-backwardly : for where we should exercise to know, wee 
exercise as having knowne : and so is oure braine delivered of 
much matter, which never was begotten by knowledge. For, 
there being two principal parts, matter to be expressed by wordes, 
and words to expresse the matter, in neyther wee use Arte, or 
Imitation, rightly. Our matter is Quod/ih't 21 indeed, though 
wrongly perfourming Ovids verse. 

{Quicquid conabar dicer e versus erit \_erat?~\ :) ^ 

never marshalling it into an assured rancke, that almost the read- 
ers cannot tell where to finde themselves. 

Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in hys Troylus and Cres- 
seid ; of whom truly I know not whether to mervaile more, either 
that he in that mistie time could see so clearely, or that wee in 
this cleare age walke so stumblingly after him. Yet had he great 
wants, fitte to be forgiven, in so reverent antiquity. I account 
the Mi?-rour of Magistrates meetely furnished of beautiful parts ; 
and in the Earl of Surries Liricks many things tasting of a noble 

20 An orator is made ; a poet is bom. 21 anything you please. 

22 Whatever I attempted to utter will be [was~\ verse. After Ovid, Tristia, 
IV. io. 20 : Et quod tentabam dicere versus erat, And what I tried to say was 
verse. 



AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE. 39 

birth, and worthy of a noble minde. The SheapJieards Kalender 
hath much Poetrie in his Eglogues : indeede worthy the reading 
if I be not deceived. That same framing of his stile to an old 
rustick language, I dare not allowe, sith neyther Theocritus in 
Greeke, Virgin in Latine, nor Sanazar in Italian, did affect it. 
Besides these, doe I not remember to have seene but fewe, (to 
speake boldely) printed, that have poeticall sinnewes in them : 
for proofe whereof, let but most of the verses bee put in Prose, 
and then aske the meaning ; and it will be found that one verse 
did but beget another, without ordering at the first what should 
be at the last : which becomes a confused masse of words, with a 
tingling sound of ryme, barely accompanied with reason. 

Our Tragedies and Comedies, (not without cause cried out 
against,) observing rules, neyther of honest civilitie, nor of skilfull 
Poetrie, excepting Gorboduck, (againe, I say, of those that I have 
seene), which notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches, and 
well sounding Phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his stile, 
and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully 
teach, and so obtayne the very end of Poesie : yet in troth it is 
very defectious in the circumstaunces, 23 which greeveth mee, because 
it might not remaine as an exact model of all Tragedies. For it 
is faulty both in place, and time, the two necessary companions 
of all corporall actions. For where the stage should alwaies repre- 
sent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should 
be, both by Aristotles precept and common reason, but one day : 
there is both many dayes, and many places, inartificially imagined. 
But if it be so in Gorboduck, how much more in al the rest? 
where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Affrick of the 
other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the Player, when 
he commeth in, must ever begin with telling you where he is : 
or els the tale wil not be conceived. Now ye shal have three 
Ladies walke to gather flowers, and then we must beleeve the 
stage to be a Garden. By and by we heare newes of shipwracke 

23 defective in particulars. 



40 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 

in the same place, and then wee are to blame if we accept it not 
for a rock. 

Upon the backe of that, comes out a hidious Monster, with 
fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bounde to 
take it for a Cave. While in the mean-time two Armies flye in, 
represented with foure swords and bucklers, and then what harde 
heart will not receive it for a pitched fielde ? Now, of time they 
are much more liberall, . . . which how absurd it is in sence, even 
sence may imagine, and Arte hath taught, and all auncient ex- 
amples justified : and at this day, the ordinary Players in Italie 
wil not erre in. Yet wil some bring in an example of Ewiuchus 
in Terence, that containeth matter of two dayes, yet far short of 
twenty yeeres. True it is, and so was it to be playd in two daies, 
and so fitted to the time it set forth. And though Plantiis hath 
in one place done amisse, let us hit with him, and not misse with 
him. But they wil say, how then shal we set forth a story, which 
containeth both many places, and many times ? And doe they 
not knowe that a Tragedie is tied to the lawes of Poesie, and not 
of Historie? not bound to follow the storie, but having liberty, 
either to faine a quite newe matter, or to frame the historie to the 
most tragicall conveniencie. Againe, many things may be told, 
which cannot be shewed, if they knowe the difference betwixt 
reporting and representing. As for example, I may speake, (though 
I am heere) of Peru, and in speech, digresse from that, to the 
description of Calicut : but in action, I cannot represent it without 
Pacolets horse 24 : and so was the manner the Auncients tooke, by 
some Nuncius? h to recount thinges done in former time, or other 
place. Lastly, if they wil represent an history, they must not (as 
Horace saith) beginne Ab ovo : 26 but they must come to the prin- 
cipall poynt of that one action, which they wil represent. By 
example this wil be best expressed. I have a story of young Poli- 
dorus, delivered for safeties sake, with great riches, by his Father 

24 See Wheeler's Vocabulary, in Appendix to Webster's Dictionary. 
25 messenger. 26 From the egg. 



AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE. 41 

Priamns to Polimnestor king of Thrace, in the Troyan war time : 
Hee after some yeeres, hearing the overthrowe of Priamus, for to 
make the treasure his owne, murthereth the child : the body of 
the child is taken up. Hecuba, shee the same day, findeth a 
slight to bee revenged most cruelly of the Tyrant : where nowe 
would one of our Tragedy writers begin, but with the delivery of 
the childe ? .Then should he sayle over into Thrace, and so spend 
I know not how many yeeres, and travaile numbers of places. 
But where dooth Euripides ? Even with the finding of the body, 
leaving the rest to be tolde by the spirit of Polidorus. This need 
no further to be inlarged, the dullest wit may conceive it. But 
besides these grosse absurdities, how all theyr Playes be neither 
right Tragedies, nor right Comedies : mingling Kings and Clownes, 
not because the matter so carrieth it : but thrust in Clownes by 
head and shoulders, to play a part in majesticall matters, with 
neither decencie nor discretion. So as neither the admiration and 
commiseration, nor the right sportfulnes, is by their mungrell 
Tragy-comedie obtained. I know Apuleius did some-what so, 
but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented 
in one moment : and I knowe the Auncients have one or two 
examples of Tragy-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphitrio : but if 
we marke them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, 
match Horn-pypes and Funeralls. So falleth it out, that having 
indeed no right Comedy, in that comicall part of our Tragedy, we 
have nothing but scurrility, unwoorthy of any chaste eares : or some 
extreame shew of doltishnes, indeed fit to lift up a loude laughter, 
and nothing els : where the whole tract of a Comedy shoulde be 
full of delight, as the Tragedy shoulde be still maintained, in a 
well raised admiration. But our Comedians thinke there is no 
delight without laughter, which is very wrong, for though laughter 
may come with delight, yet commeth it not of delight : as though 
delight should be the cause of laughter, but well may one thing 
breed both together : nay, rather in themselves, they have as it * 
were, a kind of contrarietie : for delight we scarcely doe, but in 
things that have a conveniencie to our selves, or to the generall 



42 SIR PHIIIP SIDNEY. 

nature : laughter almost ever commeth of things most dispropor- 
tioned to our selves and nature. Delight hath a joy in it, either 
permanent, or present. Laughter hath onely a scornful tickling. 
For example, we are ravished with delight to see a faire woman, 
and yet are far from being moved to laughter. We laugh at de- 
formed creatures, wherein certainely we cannot delight. We 
delight in good chaunces, we laugh at mischaunces \ we delight 
to heare the happines of our friends, or Country ; at which he 
were worthy to be laughed at that would laugh ; wee shall con- 
trarily laugh sometimes, to finde a matter quite mistaken, and goe 
downe the hill agaynst the byas, in the mouth of some such men 
as for the respect of them, one shalbe hartely sorry, yet he can- 
not chuse but laugh ; and so is rather pained, then delighted with 
laughter. Yet deny I not but that they may goe well together, 
for as in Alexanders picture well set out, wee delight without 
laughter, and in twenty mad Anticks we laugh without delight : so 
in Hercules, painted with his great beard, and furious countenance, 
in womans attire, spinning at Omphales commaundement, it 
breedeth both delight and laughter. For the representing of so 
strange a power in love, procureth delight : and the scornefulnes 
of the action, stirreth laughter. But I speake to this purpose, 
that all the end of the comicall part bee not upon such scornefull 
matters as stirreth laughter onely : but mixt with it, that delight- 
ful teaching which is the end of Poesie. And the great fault even 
in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainely by Aristotle, is 
that they styrre laughter in sinfull things ; which are rather exe- 
crable then ridiculous : or in miserable, which are rather to be 
pittied than scorned. For what is it to make folkes gape at a 
wretched Begger, or a beggerly Clowne? or against lawe of hos- 
pitality, to jest at straungers, because they speake not English so 
well as wee doe ? what do we learne, sith it is certaine 

{Nil habet infeelix paupertas durius in se, 
Quam quod ridicules homines facit.) 21 

27 Unhappy poverty has in itself nothing more disagreeable than that it 
makes men ridiculous. — Juvenal, III. 152-3. 



AN A POL OG IE FOR POETRIE. 43 

But rather a busy loving Courtier, a hartles threatening Thraso. 
A selfe-wise-seeming schoolemaster. A awry-transformed Travel- 
ler. These, if we sawe walke in stage names, which wee play 
naturally, therein were delightfull laughter, and teaching delight- 
mines : as in the other, the Tragedies of Buchanan doe justly 
bring forth a divine admiration. But I have lavished out too 
many wordes of this play matter. I doe it because as they are 
excelling parts of Poesie, so is there none so much used in Eng- 
land, and none can be more pittifully abused. Which like an 
unmannerly Daughter, shewing a bad education, causeth her 
mother Poesies honesty to bee called in question. Other sorts 
of Poetry almost have we none, but that Lyricall kind of Songs 
and Sonnets : which, Lord, if he gave us so goode mindes, how 
well it might be imployed, and with howe heavenly fruite, both 
private and publique, in singing the prayses of the immortall 
beauty : the immortall goodnes of that God who gyveth us hands 
to write, and wits to conceive, of which we might well want words, 
but never matter, of which we could tume our eies to nothing, 
but we should ever have new budding occasions. But truely 
many of such writings as come under the banner of unresistable 
love, if I were a Mistres, would never perswade mee they were 
in love : so coldely they apply fiery speeches, as men that had 
rather red Lovers writings ; and so caught up certaine swelling 
phrases, which hang together, like a man which once tolde mee, 
the winde was at North, West, and by South, because he would 
be sure to name windes enowe : then that in truth they feele those 
passions, which easily (as I think) may be bewrayed, by that same 
forciblenes, or Energia, (as the Greekes cal it) of the writer. 
But let this bee a sufficient, though short note, that wee misse the 
right use of the materiall point of Poesie. 

Now, for the out-side of it, which is words, or (as I may tearme 
it) Diction, it is even well worse. So is that honny-flowing Matron 
Eloquence, apparelled, or rather disguised, in a Curtizan-like painted 
affectation : one time with so farre fette 28 words they may seeme 

28 fetched. 



44 SIP PHILIP SIDNEY. 

Monsters : but must seeme straungers to any poore English man. 
Another tyme, with coursing of a Letter, as if they were bound to 
followe the method of a Dictionary : an other tyme, with figures 
and flowers, extreamelie winter-starved. But I would this fault 
were only peculiar to Versifiers, and had not as large possession 
among Prose-printers ; and, (which is to be mervailed) among 
many Schollers \ and, (which is to be pittied) among some 
Preachers. Truly I could wish, if at least I might be so bold, to 
wish in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity, the diligent 
imitators of Tullie, and Demosthejies, (most worthy to be imitated) 
did not so much keep Nizolian Paper-bookes of their figures and 
phrases, as by attentive translation (as it were) devoure them 
whole, and make them wholly theirs : For nowe they cast Sugar 
and Spice upon every dish that is served to the table ; Like those 
Indians, not content to weare eare-rings at the fit and naturall 
place of the eares, but they will thrust Jewels through their nose, 
and lippes, because they will be sure to be fine. 

Tullie, when he was to drive out Cateline, as it were with a 
Thunder-bolt of eloquence, often used that figure of repitition, 
Vivit? vivit? imo Senatum venit &CP Indeed, inflamed with a 
well-grounded rage, hee would have his words (as it were) double 
out of his mouth : and so doe that artificially, which we see men 
doe in choller naturally. And wee, having noted the grace of those 
words, hale ^ them in sometime to a familier Epistle, when it were 
to too much choller to be chollerick. Now for similitudes, in 
certaine printed discourses, I thinke all Herbarists, all stories of 
Beasts, Foules, and Fishes, are rifled up, that they come in multi- 
tudes to waite upon any of our conceits ; which certainly is as 
absurd a surfet to the eares as is possible : for the force of a 
similitude, not being to proove anything to a contrary Disputer, 
but onely to explane to a willing hearer, when that is done, the 
rest is a most tedious prattling : rather over-swaying the memory 
from the purpose whereto they were applyed, then any whit in- 

29 Docs he live ? does he live ? yea, he comes to the Senate, etc. — Cicero, 
Catiline, I. I, 2. 30 haul, drag. 



AN APOLOGIE FOR FOE TRIE. 45 

forming the judgement, already eyther satis-fied, or by similitudes 
not to be satis-fied. For my part, I doe not doubt, when Antonius 
and Crassus, the great forefathers of Cicero in eloquence, the one 
(as Cicero testifleth of them) pretended not to know Arte, the 
other, not to set by it : because with a playne sensiblenes, they 
might win credit of popular eares ; which credit is the nearest 
step to perswasion : which perswasion is the chiefe marke of 
Oratory ; I doe not doubt (I say) but that they used these tracks 
very sparingly, which who doth generally use, any man may see 
doth daunce to his owne musick : and so be noted by the audi- 
ence, more careful to speake curiously, then to speake truly. 

Undoubtedly, fat least to my opinion undoubtedly,) I have found 
in divers smally learned Courtiers a more sounde stile, then in some 
professors of learning : of which I can gesse no other cause, but that 
the Courtier following that which by practise hee findeth fittest to 
nature, therein, (though he know it not,) doth according to Art, 
though not by Art : where the other, using Art to shew Art, and 
not to hide Art, (as in these cases he should doe) flyeth from 
nature, and indeede abuseth Art. 

But what? me thinkes I deserve to be pounded for straying 
from Poetrie to Oratorie : but both have such an affinity in this 
wordish consideration, that I thinke this digression will make my 
meaning receive the fuller understanding : which is not to take 
upon me to teach Poets howe they should doe, but onely finding 
my selfe sick among the rest, to shewe some one or two spots of 
the common infection, growne among the most part of Writers : 
that acknowledging our selves somewhat awry, we may bend to 
the right use both of matter and manner ; whereto our language 
gyveth us great occasion, beeing indeed capable of any excellent 
exercising of it. I know, some will say it is a mingled language. 
And why not so much the better, taking the best of both the 
other? Another will say it wanteth Grammer. Nay truly, it 
hath that prayse, that it wanteth not Grammer : for Grammer it 
might have, but it needes it not ; beeing so easie of it self*, and 
so voyd of those cumbersome differences of Cases, Genders, 



46 SIR PHI IIP SIDNEY. 

Moodes, and Tenses, which I thinke was a peece of the Tower of 
Babilons curse, that a man should be put to schoole to learne his 
mother-tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the 
conceits of the minde, which is the end of speech, that hath it 
equally with any other tongue in the world : and is particulerly 
happy in compositions of two or three words together, neere the 
Greeke, far beyond the Latine : which is one of the greatest 
beauties can be in a language. 

Now, of versifying there are two sorts, the one Auncient, the 
other Moderne : the Auncient marked the quantitie of each silable, 
and according to that framed his verse : the Moderne, observing 
onely number, (with some regarde of the accent,) the chiefe life 
of it standeth in that lyke sounding of the words, which wee call 
Ryme. Whether of these be the most excellent, would beare 
many speeches. The Auncient, (no doubt) more fit for Musick, 
both words and tune observing quantity, and more fit lively to 
expresse divers passions by the low and lofty sounde of the well- 
weyed silable. The latter likewise, with hys Ryme, striketh a 
certaine musick to the eare : and in fine, sith it dooth delight, 
though by another way, it obtaines the same purpose : there beeing 
in eyther sweetnes, and wanting in neither majestie. Truely the 
English, before any other vulgar language I know, is fit for both 
sorts : for, for the Ancient, the Italian is so full of Vowels that 
it must ever be cumbred with Elisions. The Dutch, so of the 
other side with Consonants, that they cannot yeeld the sweet 
slyding fit for a Verse. The French, in his whole language, hath 
not one word that hath his accent in the last silable saving two, 
called Antepenultima, and little more hath the Spanish : and there- 
fore very gracelesly may they use Dactiles. The English is sub- 
ject to none of these defects. 

Nowe, for the ryme, though wee doe not observe quantitie, yet 
wee observe the accent very precisely : which other languages 
eyther cannot doe, or will not doe so absolutely. That Ccesura, 
or breathing place in the middest of the verse, neither Italian nor 
Spanish have, the French, and we, never almost fayle of. Lastly, 



AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE. 47 

even the very ryme it selfe, the Italian cannot put in the last 
silable, by the French named the Masculine ryme, but still in the 
next to the last, which the French call the Female ; or the next 
before that, which the Italians terme Sdrueeiola. 31 The example 
of the former is Buono, Suono, of the Sdrueeiola, Femina, Semina. 
The French, of the other side, hath both the Male, as Bon, Son, 
and the Female, as Blaise, Taise. But the Sdrucciola, hee hath 
not : where the English hath all three, as Due, True, Father, 
Rather, Motion, Fotion ; 32 with much more which might be sayd, 
but that I finde already the triflingnes of this discourse is much 
too much enlarged. So that sith the ever-praise-worthy Poesie is 
full of vertue-breeding delightfulnes, and voyde of no gyfte that 
ought to be in the noble name of learning : sith the blames laid 
against it are either false, or feeble : sith the cause why it is not 
esteemed in Englande, is the fault of Poet-apes, not Poets : sith 
lastly, our tongue is most fit to honor Poesie, and to bee honored 
by Poesie, I conjure you all, that have had the evill-lucke to reade 
this incke-wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the nyne 
Muses, no more to scorn the sacred misteries of Poesie : no 
more to laugh at the name of Poets, as though they were next 
inheritours to Fooles : no more to jest at the reverent title of 
a Rymer : but to beleeve with Aristotle, that they were the 
auncient Treasurers of the Graecians Divinity. To beleeve with 
Bembus, that they were first bringers in of all civilitie. To 
beleeve with Sealiger, that no Philosophers precepts can sooner 
make you an honest man, then the reading of Virgill. To beleeve 
with Clauserus, the Translator of Cornutus, that it pleased the 
heavenly Deitie, by Hesiod and Homer, under the vayle of fables, 
to give us all knowledge, Logick, Rethorick, Philosophy, naturall, 
and morall ; and Quid non?^ To beleeve with me, that there 
are many misteries contained in Poetrie, which of purpose were 
written darkely, least by prophane wits it should bee abused. To 
beleeve with Landin, that they are so beloved of the Gods that 

31 gliding. 32 Pronounced as trisyllables, as in Shakspere. 33 What not? 



48 SIR PHIIIP SIDNEY. 

whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury. Lastly, to 

beleeve themselves, when they tell you they will make you im- 

mortall by their verses. 

Thus doing, your name shall nourish in the Printers shoppes ; 

thus doing, you shall bee of kinne to many a poeticall Preface ; 

thus doing, you shall bee most fayre, most ritch, most wise, most 

all, you shall dwell upon Superlatives. Thus dooing, though you 

be Libertino patre natus, Si you shall suddenly grow Hercules \Her- 

culis ?~\ proles : 35 

Si quid mea carmina possunl. 36 

Thus doing, your soule shal be placed with Dantes Beatrix, or 
Virgits Anchises. But if, (fie of such a but) you be borne so 
neere the dull making Cataphract of Nilus, that you cannot heare 
the Plannet-like Musick of Poetrie, if you have so earth-creeping 
a mind, that it cannot lift it selfe up to looke to the sky of Poetry : 
or rather, by a certaine rusticall disdaine, will become such a 
Mome, 37 as to be a Momus of Poetry : then, though I will not 
wish unto you the Asses eares of Midas, nor to bee driven by a 
Poets verses, (as Bubonax was) to hang himselfe, nor to be rimed 
to death, as is said to be doone in Ireland : yet thus much curse 
I must send you, in the behalfe of all Poets, that while you live, 
you live in love, and never get favour, for lacking skill of a Sonnet : 
and when you die, your memory die from the earth, for want of 
an Epitaph. 

34 Born of a freedman father. 36 If my songs avail. 

35 T/w offspring of Hercules. 37 a dull, stupid person. 



III. 

RICHARD HOOKER. 

(1553-4— 1600.) 

OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. {BOOK I.) 

[Written about 1590.] 

X. That which hitherto we have set down is (I hope) sufficient 
to shew their brutishness, which imagine that religion 

How reason ex. 

doth lead men and virtue are only as men will account ot them ; 
unto the making ^^ we m ight make as much account, if we would, 

of human laws . . , , , 

whereby politic of the contrary, without any harm unto ourselves, 

societies are gov- anc [ t hat i n nature they are as indifferent one as the 

agreemeT^ about other. We see then how nature itself teacheth laws 

laws whereby the an d statutes to live by. The laws which have been 

communionof hitherto mentioned do bind men absolutely even as 

independent so- they are men, although they have never any settled 

cieties standeth. feflj^gj^ never any so lemn agreement amongst 

themselves what to do or not to do. But forasmuch as we are 
not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent 
store of things needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a 
life fit for the dignity of man ; therefore to supply those defects 
and imperfections which are in us living single and solely by our- 
selves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship 
with others. This was the cause of men's uniting themselves at 
the first in politic x societies ; which societies could not be without 
government, nor government without a distinct kind of law from 
that which hath been already declared. Two foundations there 

1 political. 

49 



50 RICHARD HOOKER. 

are which bear up public societies ; the one, a natural inclination, 
whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship ; the other, an 
order expressly or secretly agreed upon touching the manner of 
their union in living together. The latter is that which we call 
the law of a commonweal, the very soul of a politic body, the parts 
whereof are by law animated, held together, and set on work in 
such actions as the common good requireth. Laws politic, or- 
dained for external order and regiment 2 amongst men, are never 
framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man to be 
inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience unto 
the sacred laws of his nature ; in a word, unless presuming man to 
be in regard of his depraved mind little better than a wild beast, 
they do accordingly provide notwithstanding so to frame his out- 
ward actions, that they be no hindrance unto the common good 
for which societies are instituted : unless they do this, they are 
not perfect. It resteth therefore that we consider how nature 
findeth out such laws of government as serve to direct even nature 
depraved to a right end. 

[2] All men desire to lead in this world a happy life. That 
life is led most happily, wherein all virtue is exercised without 
impediment or let. The Apostle, in exhorting men to content- 
ment although they have in this world no more than very bare 
food and raiment, giveth us thereby to understand that those are 
even the lowest of things necessary ; that if we should be stripped 
of all those things without which we might possibly be, yet these 
must be left ; that destitution in these is such an impediment, as 
till it be removed suffereth not the mind of man to admit any 
other care. For this cause, first God assigned Adam maintenance 
of life, and then appointed him a law to observe. For this cause, 
after men began to grow to a number, the first thing we read they 
gave themselves unto was the tilling of the earth and the feeding 
of cattle. Having by this mean whereon to live, the principal 
actions of their life afterward are noted by the exercise of their 

2 government. 



OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 51 

religion. True it is, that the kingdom of God must be the first 
thing in our purposes and desires. But inasmuch as righteous 
life presupposeth life ; inasmuch as to live virtuously it is impos- 
sible except we live ; therefore the first impediment, which natu- 
rally we endeavour to remove, is penury and want of things without 
which we cannot live. Unto life many implements 3 are necessary ; 
moe, if we seek (as all men naturally do) such a life as hath in it 
joy, comfort, delight, and pleasure. To this end we see how 
quickly sundry arts mechanical were found out, in the very prime 
of the world. As things of greatest necessity are always first pro- 
vided for, so things of greatest dignity are most accounted of by 
all such as judge rightly. Although therefore riches be a thing 
which every man wisheth, yet no man of judgment can esteem it 
better to be rich, than wise, virtuous, and religious. If we be both 
or either of these, it is not because we are so born. For into the 
world we come as empty of the one as of the other, as naked in 
mind as we are in body. Both which necessities of man had at 
the first no other helps and supplies than only domestical ; such 
as that which the Prophet implieth, saying, Can a mother forget 
her Child?* such as that which the Apostle mentioneth, saying, 
He that e are th not for his own is -worse than an Infidel ; 5 such 
as that concerning Abraham, Abraham will command his sons and 
his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord? 

[3] But neither that which we learn of ourselves nor that which 
others teach us can prevail, where wickedness and malice have 
taken deep root. If therefore when there was but as yet one only 
family in the world, no means of instruction human or divine 
could prevent effusion of blood ; how could it be chosen but that 
when families were multiplied and increased upon earth, after 
separation each* providing for itself, envy, strife, contention, and 
violence must grow amongst them? For hath not nature fur- 
nished man with wit and valour, as it were with armour, which 
may be used as well unto extreme evil as good ? Yea, were they 

3 accessories. 4 Isa. xlix. 15. 5 1 Tim. v. 8. G Gen. xviii. 19. 



52 RICHARD HOOKER. 

not used by the rest of the world unto evil; unto the contrary 
only by Seth, Enoch, and those few the rest in that line ? We all 
make complaint of the iniquity of our times: not unjustly; for 
the days are evil. But compare them with those times wherein 
there were no civil societies, with those times wherein there was 
as yet no manner of public regiment established, with those times 
wherein there were not above eight persons righteous living upon 
the face of the earth ; and we have surely good cause to think 
that God hath blessed us exceedingly, and hath made us behold 
most happy days. 

[4] To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries, and 
wrongs, there was no way but only by growing unto composition 
and agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of 
government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto ; 
that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by 
them the peace, tranquillity, and happy estate of the rest might be 
procured. Men always knew that when force and injury was 7 
offered they might be defenders of themselves ; they knew that 
howsoever men may seek their own commodity, 8 yet if this were 
done with injury unto others it was not to be suffered, but by all 
men and by all good means to be withstood ; finally they knew 
that no man might in reason take upon him to determine his own 
right, and according to his own determination proceed in mainte- 
nance thereof, inasmuch as every man is towards himself and 
them whom he greatly affecteth partial ; and therefore that strifes 
and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common 
consent all to be ordered by some whom they should agree upon : 
without which consent there was no reason that one man should 
take upon him to be lord or judge over another ; because, although 
there be according to the opinion of some very great and judicious 
men a kind of natural right in the noble, wise, and virtuous, to 
govern them which are of servile disposition ; nevertheless for 
manifestation of this their right, and men's more peaceable con- 

7 Subjects connected by and with singular verb, as often. 8 advantage. 



OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 53 

tention on both sides, the assent of them who are to be governed 
seemeth necessary. 

To fathers within their private families nature hath given a 
supreme power ; for which cause we see throughout the world 
even from the foundation thereof, all men have ever been taken 
as lords and lawful kings in their own houses. Howbeit over a 
whole grand multitude having no such dependency upon any one, 
and consisting of so many families as every politic society in the 
world doth, impossible it is that any should have complete lawful 
power, but by consent of men, or immediate appointment of God ; 
because not having the natural superiority of fathers, their power 
must needs be either usurped, and then unlawful ; or, if lawful, 
then either granted or consented unto by them over whom they 
exercise the same, or else given extraordinarily from God, unto 
whom all the world is subject. It is no improbable opinion there- 
fore which the Arch-philosopher 9 was of, that as the chiefest 
person in every household was always as it were a king, so when 
numbers of households joined themselves in civil society together, 
kings were the first kind of governors amongst them. Which is 
also (as it seemeth) the reason why the name of Father continued 
still in them, who of fathers were made rulers ; as also the ancient 
custom of governors to do as Melchisedec, and being kings to 
exercise the office of priests, which fathers did at the first, grew 
perhaps by the same occasion. 

Howbeit not this 10 the only kind of regiment that hath been 
received in the world. The inconveniences of one kind have 
caused sundry other to be devised. So that in a word all public 
regiment of what kind soever seemeth evidently to have risen from 
deliberate advice, consultation, and composition between men, 
judging it convenient and behoveful ; there being no impossibility 
in nature considered by itself, but that men might have lived with- 
out any public regiment. Howbeit, the corruption of our nature 
being presupposed, we may not deny but that the law of nature 

9 Aristotle. 10 Substantive verb omitted. 



54 RICHARD HOOR'ER, 

doth now require of necessity some kind of regiment ; so that to 
bring things unto the first course they were in, and utterly to take 
away all kind of public government in the world, were apparently 
to overturn the whole world. 

[5] The case of man's nature standing therefore as it doth, 
some kind of regiment the law of nature doth require ; yet the 
kinds thereof being many, nature tieth not to any one, but leaveth 
the choice as a thing arbitrary. At the first when some certain 
kind of regiment was once approved, it may be that nothing was 
then further thought upon for the manner of governing, but all 
permitted unto their wisdom and discretion which were to rule ; 
till by experience they found this for all parts very inconvenient, 
so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy did indeed 
but increase the sore which it should have cured. They saw that 
to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery. 
This constrained them to come unto laws, wherein all men might 
see their duties beforehand, and know the penalties of transgress- 
ing them. If things be simply good or evil, and withal universally 
so acknowledged, there needs no new law to be made for such 
things. The first kind therefore of things appointed by laws 
human containeth whatsoever being in itself naturally good or evil, 
is notwithstanding more secret than that it can be discerned by 
every man's present conceit, without some deeper discourse and 
judgment. In which discourse because there is difficulty and 
possibility many ways to err, unless such things were set down by 
laws, many would be ignorant of their duties which now are not, 
and many that know what they should do would nevertheless dis- 
semble it, and to excuse themselves pretend ignorance and sim- 
plicity, which now they cannot. 

[6] And because the greatest part of men are such as prefer 
their own private good before all things, even that good which 
is sensual, before whatsoever is most divine ; and for that the 
labour of doing good, together with the pleasure arising from the 
contrary, doth make men for the most part slower to the one 
and proner to the other, than that duty prescribed them by law 



■ OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 55 

can prevail sufficiently with them : therefore unto laws that men 
do make for the benefit of men it hath seemed always needful 
to add rewards, which may more allure unto good than any 
hardness deterreth from it, and punishments, which may more 
deter from evil, than any sweetness thereto allureth. Wherein 
as the generality 11 is natural, Virtue rewardable and vice pun- 
ishable ; so the particular determination of the reward or pun- 
ishment belongeth unto them by whom laws are made. Theft is 
naturally punishable, but the kind of punishment is positive, and 
such lawful as men shall think with discretion convenient by law 
to appoint. 

[7] In laws, that which is natural bindeth universally, that which 
is positive not so. To let go those kind 12 of positive laws which 
men impose upon themselves, as by vow unto God, contract with 
men, or such like • somewhat it will make unto our purpose, a 
little more fully to consider what things are incident into the 
making of the positive laws for the government of them that live 
united in public society. Laws do not only teach what is good, 
but they enjoin it, they have in them a certain constraining force. 
And to constrain men unto anything inconvenient doth seem 
unreasonable. Most requisite therefore it is that to devise laws 
which all men shall be forced to obey none but wise men be ad- 
mitted. Laws are matters of principal consequence ; men of 
common capacity and but* ordinary judgment are not able (for 
how should they ?) to discern what things are fittest for each kind 
and state of regiment. We cannot be ignorant how much our 
obedience unto laws dependeth upon this point. Let a man 
though never so justly oppose himself unto them that are dis- 
ordered in their ways, and what one amongst them commonly 
doth not stomach at such contradiction, storm at reproof, and 
hate such as would reform them? Notwithstanding even they 
which brook it worst that men should tell them of their duties, 
when they are told the same by a law, think very well and reason- 

11 general proposition. 12 Common in Elizabethan English. 



56 RICHARD HOOKER. 

ably of it. For why? They presume that the law doth speak 
with all indifferency ; that the law hath no side-respect to their 
persons; that the law is as it were an oracle proceeded from 
wisdom and understanding. 

[8] Howbeit laws do not take their constraining force from the 
quality of such as devise them, but from that power which doth 
give them the strength of laws. That which we spake before* con- 
cerning the power of government must here be applied unto the 
power of making laws whereby to govern ; which power God hath 
over all : and by the natural law, whereunto he hath made all 
subject, the lawful power of making laws to command whole politic 
societies of men belongeth so properly unto the same entire socie- 
ties, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon 
earth to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express 
commission immediately and personally received from God, or 
else by authority derived at the first from their consent upon 
whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere 
tyranny. 

Laws they are not therefore which public approbation hath not 
made so. But approbation not only they give who personally 
declare their assent by voice, sign, or act, but also when others 
do it in their names by right originally at the least derived from 
them. As in parliaments, councils, and the like assemblies, 
although we be not personally ourselves present, notwithstanding 
our assent is, by reason of others, agents there in our behalf. And 
what we do by others, no reason 13 but that it should stand as our 
deed, no less effectually to bind us than if ourselves had done it 
in person. In many things assent is given, they that give it not 
imagining they do so, because the manner of their assenting is 
not apparent. As for example, when an absolute monarch com- 
mandeth his subjects that which seemeth good in his own dis- 
cretion, hath not his edict the force of a law whether they approve 
or dislike it ? Again, that which hath been received long sithence 14 

13 Substantive verb omitted. 14 since. 



OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 57 

and is by custom now established, we keep as a law which we may 
not transgress ; yet what consent was ever thereunto sought or 
required at our hands? 

Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith M men naturally 
have no full and perfect power to command whole politic multi- 
tudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent we could in 
such sort be at no man's commandment living. And to be com- 
manded we do consent, when that society whereof we are part 
hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same 
after by the like universal agreement. Wherefore as any man's 
deed past is good as long as himself continueth ; so the act of a 
public society of men done five hundred years sithence standeth 
as theirs who presently are of the same societies, because corpora- 
tions are immortal ; we were then alive in our predecessors, and 
they in their successors do live still. Laws therefore human, of 
what kind soever, are available by consent. 

[9] If here it be demanded how it cometh to pass that this 
being common unto all laws which are made, there should be 
found even in good laws so great a variety as there is ; we must 
note the reason hereof to be the sundry particular ends, where- 
unto the different disposition of that subject or matter, for which 
laws are provided, causeth them to have especial respect in making 
laws. A law there is mentioned amongst the Grecians whereof 
Pittacus is reported to have been the author ; and by that law it 
was agreed, that he which being overcome with drink did then 
strike any man, should suffer punishment double as much as if he 
had done the same being sober. No man could ever have thought 
this reasonable, that had intended thereby only to punish the 
injury committed according to the gravity of the fact : for who 
knoweth not that harm advisedly done is naturally less pardonable, 
and therefore worthy of the sharper punishment ? But forasmuch 
as none did so usually this way offend as men in that case, which 
they wittingly fell into, even because they would be so much the 
more freely outrageous ; it was for their public good, where such 
disorder was grown, to frame a positive law for remedy thereof 



58 RICHARD HOOKER. 

accordingly. To this appertain those known laws of making laws ; 
as that law-makers must have an eye to the place where, and to 
the men amongst whom : that one kind of laws cannot serve for 
all kinds of regiment : that where the multitude beareth sway, 
laws that shall tend unto preservation of that state must make 
common smaller offices to go by lot, for fear of strife and division 
likely to arise, by reason that ordinary qualities sufficing for dis- 
charge of such offices, they could not but by many be desired, and 
so with danger contended for, and not missed without grudge and 
discontentment, whereas at an uncertain lot none can find them- 
selves grieved, on whomsoever it lighteth ; contrariwise the greatest, 
whereof but few are capable, to pass by popular election, that 
neither the people may envy such as have those honours, inasmuch 
as themselves bestow them, and that the chiefest may be kindled 
with desire to exercise all parts of rare and beneficial virtue, 
knowing they shall not lose their labour by growing in fame and 
estimation amongst the people : if the helm of chief government 
be in the hands of a few of the wealthiest, that then laws providing 
for continuance thereof must make the punishment of contumely 
and wrong offered unto any of the common sort sharp and griev- 
ous, that so the evil may be prevented whereby the rich are most 
likely to bring themselves into hatred with the people, who are 
not wont to take so great an offence when they are excluded from 
honours and offices, as when their persons are contumeliously 
trodden upon. In other kinds of regiment the like is observed 
concerning the difference of positive laws, which to be every where 
the same is impossible and against their nature. 

[10] Now as the learned in the laws of this land observe, that 
our statutes sometimes are only the affirmation or ratification of 
that which by common law was held before ; so here it is not to 
be omitted that generally all laws human, which are made for the 
ordering of politic societies, be either such as establish some duty 
whereunto all men by the law of reason did before stand bound ; 
or else such as make that a duty now which before was none. 
The one sort we may for distinction's sake call mixedly, and the 



OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 59 

other merely human. That which plain or necessary reason bindeth 
men unto may be in sundry considerations expedient to be ratified 
by human law. For example, if confusion of blood in marriage, 
the liberty of having many wives at once, or any other the like 
corrupt and unreasonable custom doth happen to have prevailed 
far, and to have gotten the upper hand of right reason with the 
greatest part, so that no way is left to rectify such foul disorder 
without prescribing by law the same things which reason neces- 
sarily doth enforce but is not perceived that so it doth ; or if many 
be grown unto that which the Apostle did lament in some, con- 
cerning whom he writeth, saying, that Even what things they 
naturally know, in those ve?y things as beasts void of reason they 
corrupted the?7iselves ; 15 or if there be no such special accident, 
yet forasmuch as the common sort are led by the sway of their 
sensual desires, and therefore do more shun sin for the sensible 
evils which follow it amongst men, than for any kind of sentence 
which reason doth pronounce against it ; this very thing is cause 
sufficient why duties belonging unto such kind of virtue, albeit 
the law of reason teach them, should notwithstanding be prescribed 
even by human law. Which law in this case* we term mixed, be- 
cause the matter whereunto it bindeth is the same which reason 
necessarily doth require at our hands, and from the law of reason 
it differeth in the manner of binding only. For whereas men 
before stood bound in conscience to do as the law of reason 
teacheth, they are now by virtue of human law become constrain- 
able, and if they outwardly transgress, punishable. As for laws 
which are merely human, the matter of them is any thing which 
reason doth but probably teach to be fit and convenient ; so that 
till such time as law hath passed amongst men about it, of itself 
it bindeth no man. One example whereof may be this. Lands 
are by human law in some places after the owner's decease divided 
unto all his children, in some all descendeth to the eldest son. 
If the law of reason did necessarily require but the one of these 

15 Jude 10. 



60 RICHARD HOOKER. 

two to be done, they which by law have received the other should 
be subject to that heavy sentence, which denounceth against all 
that decree wicked, unjust, and unreasonable things, woe. Whereas 
now whichsoever be received there is no law of reason trans- 
gressed ; because there is probable reason why either of them 
may be expedient, and for either of them more than probable 
reason there is not to be found. 

[n] Laws whether mixedly or merely human are made by 
politic societies : some, only as those societies are civilly united ; 
some, as they are spiritually joined and make such a body as we 
call the Church. Of laws human in this later kind we are to speak 
in the third book following. Let it therefore suffice thus far to 
have touched the force wherewith almighty God hath graciously 
endued our nature, and thereby enabled the same to find out both 
those laws which all men generally are for ever bound to observe, 
and also such as are most fit for their behoof, who lead their lives 
in any ordered state of government. 

[12] Now besides that law which simply concerneth men as 
men, and that which belongeth unto them as they are men linked 
with others in some form of politic society, there is a third kind 
of law which toucheth all such several bodies politic, so far forth 
as one of them hath public commerce with another. And this 
third is the law of nations. Between men and beasts there is no 
possibility of sociable communion; because the well-spring of 
that communion is a natural delight which man hath to transfuse 
from himself unto others, and to receive from others into himself, 
especially those things wherein the excellency of his kind doth 
most consist. The chiefest instrument of human communion there- 
fore is speech, because thereby we impart mutually one to another 
the conceits of our reasonable understanding. And for that cause 
seeing beasts are not hereof capable, forasmuch as with them we 
can use no such conference, they being in degree, although above 
other creatures on earth to whom nature hath denied sense, yet 
lower than to be sociable companions of man to whom nature hath 
given reason ; it is of Adam said that amongst the beasts He found 



OF THE LA WS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 61 

not for himself any meet companion}* Civil society doth more 
content the nature of man than any private kind of solitary living, 
because in society this good of mutual participation is so much 
larger than otherwise. Herewith notwithstanding we are satisfied, 
but we covet (if it might be) to have a kind of society and fellow- 
ship even with all mankind. Which thing Socrates intending to 
signify professed himself a citizen, not of this or that common- 
wealth, but of the world. And an effect of that very natural desire 
in us, (a manifest token that we wish after a sort an universal 
fellowship with all men,) appeareth by the wonderful delight men 
have, some to visit foreign countries, some to discover nations not 
heard of in former ages, we all to know the affairs and dealings of 
other people, yea to be in league of amity with them : and this 
not only for traffic's sake, or to the end that when many are con- 
federated each may make the other the more strong, but for such 
cause also as moved the Queen of Saba to visit Salomon ; 17 and 
in a word, because nature doth presume that how many men there 
are in the world, so many Gods as it were there are, or at least- 
wise such they should be towards men. 

[13] Touching 18 laws which are to serve men in this behalf; 
even as those laws of reason, which (man retaining his original 
integrity) had been sufficient to direct each particular person in 
all his affairs and duties, are not sufficient but require the access 
of other laws, now that man and his offspring are grown thus cor- 
rupt and sinful ; again, as those laws of polity and regiment, which 
would have served men living in public society together with that 
harmless disposition which then they should have had, are not 
able now to serve, when men's iniquity is so hardly restrained 
within any tolerable bounds : in like manner, the national laws of 
mutual commerce between societies of that former and better 
quality might have been other than now, when nations are so 
prone to offer violence, injury, and wrong. Hereupon hath grown 
in every of these three kinds that distinction between Primary 

16 Gen. ii. 20. 17 1 Kings x. 1. 18 i.e., to consider, treat of. 



62 RICHARD HOOKER. 

and Secondary laws ; the one grounded upon sincere, the other 
built upon depraved nature. Primary laws of nations are such as 
concern embassage, such as belong to the courteous entertainment 
of foreigners and strangers, such as serve for commodious traffic, 
and the like. Secondary laws in the same kind are such as this 
present unquiet world is most familiarly acquainted with ; I mean 
laws of arms, which yet are much better known than kept. But 
what matter the law of nations doth contain I omit to search. 

The strength and virtue of that law is such that no particular 
nation can lawfully prejudice the same by any their several laws 
and ordinances, more than a man by his private resolutions the 
law of the whole commonwealth or state wherein he liveth. For 
as civil law, being the act of the whole body politic, doth therefore 
overrule each several part of the same body ; so there is no reason 
that any one commonwealth of itself should to the prejudice of 
another annihilate that whereupon the world hath agreed. For 
which cause, the Lacedemonians forbidding all access of strangers 
into their coasts are in that respect both by Josephus and Theo- 
doret deservedly blamed, as being enemies to that hospitality 
which for common humanity's sake all the nations on earth should 
embrace. 

[14] Now as there is great cause of communion, and conse- 
quently of laws for the maintenance of communion, amongst 
nations ; so amongst nations Christian the like in regard even of 
Christianity hath been always judged needful. 

And in this kind of correspondence amongst nations the force 
of general councils doth , stand. For as one and the same law 
divine, whereof in the next place we are to speak, is unto all 
Christian churches a rule for the chiefest things, by means whereof 
they all in that respect make one Church, as having all but One 
Lord, one faith, and one baptism : 19 so the urgent necessity of 
mutual communion for preservation of our unity in these things, 
as also for order in some other things convenient to be everywhere 

19 Ephes. iv. 5. 



OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 63 

uniformly kept, maketh it requisite that the Church of God here 
on earth have her laws of spiritual commerce between Christian 
nations ; laws by virtue whereof all churches may enjoy freely the 
use of those reverend, religious, and sacred consultations, which 
are termed councils general. A thing whereof God's own blessed 
Spirit was the author; a thing practised by the holy Apostles 
themselves ; a thing always afterwards kept and observed through- 
out the world ; a thing never otherwise than most highly esteemed 
of, till pride, ambition, and tyranny began by factious and vile 
endeavours to abuse that divine invention unto the furtherance of 
wicked purposes. But as the just authority of civil courts and 
parliaments is not therefore to be abolished, because sometime 
there is cunning used to frame them according to the private 
intents of men overpotent in the commonwealth ; so the grievous 
abuse which hath been of councils should rather cause men to 
study how so gracious a thing may again be reduced to that first 
perfection, than in regard of stains and blemishes sithence growing 
be held for ever in extreme disgrace. 

To speak of this matter as the cause requireth would require 
very long discourse. All I will presently say is this. Whether it 
be for the finding out of any thing whereunto divine law bindeth 
us, but yet in such sort that men are not thereof on all sides 
resolved ; or for the setting down of some uniform judgment to 
stand touching such things, as being neither way matters of neces- 
sity, are notwithstanding offensive and scandalous when there is 
open opposition about them ; be it for the ending of strifes touch- 
ing matters of Christian belief, wherein the one part may seem to 
have probable cause of dissenting from the other ; or be it con- 
cerning matters of polity, order, and regiment in the church ; I 
nothing doubt but that Christian men should much better frame 
themselves to those heavenly precepts, which our Lord and Saviour 
with so great instancy gave *° as concerning peace and unity, if 
we did all concur in desire to have the use of ancient councils 

20 John xiv. 27. 



64 RICHARD HOOKER. 

again renewed, rather than these proceedings continued, which 
either make all contentions endless, or bring them to one only 
determination, and that of all other the worst, which is by sword. 

[15] It followeth therefore that a new foundation being laid, 
we now adjoin hereunto that which cometh in the next place to 
be spoken of; namely, wherefore God hath himself by scripture 
made known such laws as serve for direction of men. 



XI. [6] From salvation therefore and life all flesh being ex- 
cluded this way, behold how the wisdom of God hath revealed a 
way mystical and supernatural, a way directing unto the same end 
of life by a course which groundeth itself upon the guiltiness of 
sin, and through sin desert of condemnation and death. For in 
this way the first thing is the tender compassion of God respecting 
us drowned and swallowed up in misery ; the next is redemption 
out of the same by the precious death and merit of a mighty 
Saviour, which hath witnessed of himself, saying, / am the way, 21 
the way that leadeth us from misery into bliss. This super- 
natural way had God in himself prepared before all worlds. The 
way of supernatural duty which to us he hath prescribed, our 
Saviour in the Gospel of St. John doth note, terming it by an 
excellency, the work of God ; This is the work of God, that ye 
believe iti him whom he hath sent. 22 Not that God doth require 
nothing unto happiness at the hands of men saving only a naked 
belief, for hope and charity we may not exclude ; but that without 
belief all other things are as nothing, and it the ground of those 
other divine virtues. 

Concerning faith, the principal object whereof is that eternal 
verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisdom in 
Christ ; concerning hope, the highest object whereof is that ever- 
lasting goodness which in Christ doth quicken the dead ; concern- 
ing charity, the final object whereof is that incomprehensible 

21 John xiv. 6. - John vi. 29. 



OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLLTY. 65 

beauty which shineth in the countenance of Christ the Son of the 
living God : concerning these virtues, the first of which beginning 
here with a weak apprehension of things not seen, endeth with 
the intuitive vision of God in the world to come; the second 
beginning here with a trembling expectation of things far removed 
and as yet but only heard of, endeth with real and actual fruition 
of that which no tongue can express j the third beginning here 
with a weak inclination of heart towards him unto whom we are 
not able to approach, endeth with endless union, the mystery 
whereof is higher than the reach of the thoughts of men ; concern- 
ing that faith, hope, and charity, without which there can be no 
salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only in that 
law which God himself hath from heaven revealed ? There is not 
in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any 
of these three, more than hath been supernaturally received from 
the mouth of the eternal God. 

Laws therefore concerning these things are supernatural, both 
in respect of the manner of delivering them, which is divine ; and 
also in regard of the things delivered, which are such as have not 
in nature any cause from which they flow, but were by the volun- 
tary appointment of God ordained besides the course of nature, 
to rectify nature's obliquity withal. 



XVI. [8] Wherefore that here we may briefly end : of Law 
there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the 
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things in 
heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her 
care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both 
Angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though 
each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, 
admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy. 23 

23 Book I. closes with this grand peroration, this " celebrated sentence," 
as Hallam calls it. (See note in Church's Clarendon Press edition.) 



IV. 

FRANCIS BACON. 

(1561— 1626.) 

1. THE ESS AYES OR COUNSELS, CIVILL AND MO R ALL, 
OE ERANCIS LO. VERULAM, VISCOUNT ST ALB AN 

Of Religion. (161 2.) 

ENLARGED AND TITLE CHANGED TO 

Of Unity in Religion. (1625.) 
1. Of Religion. 

The quarrels and divisions for Religion were evils unknowne to 
the Heathen : and no marvell ; for it is the true God that is the 
jealous God; and the gods of the Heathen were good fellowes. 
But yet the bonds of religious unity are so to be strengthened, as 
the bonds of humane society be not dissolved. 

Lucretius the Poet, when hee beheld the act of Agamemnon, 

induring and assisting at the sacrifice of his daughter, concludes 

with this verse : 

Tantum relligio potuit suadere ma/orum. 1 

But what would hee have done, if he had knowne the massacre of 
France; or the powder treason of England 7 3 Certainly he would 
have been seven times more Epicure and Atheist then he was. 
Nay, hee would rather have chosen to be one of the Mad men of 
Minister, then to have beene a partaker of those Counsels. For 
it is better that Religion should deface mens understanding, then 
their piety and charitie ; retaining reason onely but as an Engine 
and Charriot driver of cruelty and malice. 

1 To such evils could Religion induce men. — LUCRETIUS, De rerum Natura, 
I. 102. 2 August 24, 1572. 3 November 5, 1605. 

66 



THE ESS A YES OE VISCOUNT ST. ALB AN. 67 

It was a great blasphemie, when the Divell said j I will ascend, 
and be like the highest:™ but it is a greater blasphemie, if they 
make God to say ; I will descend, and bee like the Prince of Dark- 
nesse : and it is no better, when they make the cause of Religion 
descend to the execrable accions of murthering of Princes, butch- 
ery of people, and firing of States. Neither is there such a sinne 
against the person of the holy Ghost, (if one should take it liter- 
ally) as in stead of the likenes of a Dove, to bring him downe in 
the likenesse of a Vulture, or Raven ; nor such a scandall to their 
Church, as out of the Barke of Saint Peter, to set forth the flagge 
of a Barge of Pirats and Assassins. Therefore since these things 
are the common enemies of humane society : Princes by their 
power; Churches by their Decrees; and all learning, Christian, 
morall, of what soever sect, or opinion, by their Mercurie rod ; 
ought to joyne in the damning to Hell for ever these facts and 
their supports : and in all Counsels concerning religion, that Coun- 
sell of the Apostle would be prefixed, Ira hominis non implet 
justitiam Dei* 

2. Of Unity in Religion. 

Religion being the chiefe Band of humane Society, it is a happy 
thing when it selfe is well contained within the true Band of Unity. 
The Quarrels and Divisions about Religion were Evils unknowne 
to the Heathen. The Reason was because the Religion of the 
Heathen consisted rather in Rites and Ceremonies then in any 
constant Beleefe. For you may imagine what kinde of Faith 
theirs was, when the chiefe Doctors and Fathers of their Church 
were the Poets. But the true God hath this Attribute, That he is 
a Jealous God; And therefore, his worship and Religion will 
endure no Mixture, nor Partner. 

We shall therefore speake a few words concerning the Unity 
of the Church; What are the Fruits thereof; what the Bounds; 
And what the Meanes ? 

* Jas. i. 20 : ■ The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God: 



68 FRANCIS BACON. 

The Fruits of Unity (next unto the well Pleasing of God, which 
is All in All) are two ; the One, towards those that are without the 
Church; the Other, towards those that are within. For the 
Former; It is certaine that Heresies and Schismes are of all 
others, 5 the greatest Scandals ; yea more then Corruption of Man- 
ners. For as in the Naturall Body, a wound or Solution of Con- 
tinuity is worse than a Corrupt Humor ; So in the Spirituall. So 
that nothing doth so much keepe Men out of the Church, and 
drive Men out of the Church, as Breach of Unity ; And therefore, 
whensoever it commeth to that passe that one saith, Ecce in De- 
serto ; 6 Another saith, Ecce in penetralibus ; 6 That is, when some 
Men seeke Christ in the Conventicles of Heretikes, and others in 
an Outward Face of a Church, that voice had need continually to 
sound in Mens Eares, No lite exire, Goe not out. The Doctor of 
the Gentiles (the Propriety of whose Vocation drew him to have 
a speciall care of those without) saith ; If an Heathen co?ne in, 
and heare you speake with severall Tongues, Will he not say that 
you are mad? 1 And certainly it is little better when Atheists and 
prophane Persons do heare of so many Discordant and Contrary 
Opinions in Religion ; It doth avert them from the Church, and 
maketh them, To sit downe in the chaire of the Scorners? It is 
but a light Thing to be Vouched in so Serious a Matter, but yet 
it expresseth well the Deformity. There is a Master of Scoffing ; 
that in his Catalogue of Books, of a faigned Library, sets Downe 
this Title of a Booke ; The morris daunce of Heretikes? For 
indeed, every Sect of them hath a Divers Posture, or Cringe by 
themselves, which cannot but Move Derision in Worldlings, and 
Depraved Politickes, who are apt to contemne Holy Things. 

5 Common expression in Elizabethan English. 

6 Matt. xxiv. 26 (Vulgate) : ' Behold he is in the desert ' / ' Behold he is in 
the secret chambers? 

7 1 Cor. xiv. 23. 

8 Ps. i. I. 

9 La Morisque des hereticques. Rabelais, Pantagruel, II. 7. — Arber. See 
Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, Dissertation III. pp. 576 ff., for full de- 



THE ESS A YES OF VISCOUNT ST. A LB AN. 69 

As for the Fruit towards those that are within ; It is Peace ; 
which containeth infinite Blessings : It establisheth Faith ; It 
kindleth Charity ; The outward Peace of the Church Distilleth 
into Peace of Conscience ; And it turneth the Labours of Writing 
and Reading of Controversies into Treaties of Mortification and 
Devotion. 

Concerning the Bounds of Unity ; The true Placing of them 
importeth exceedingly. 10 There appeare to be two extremes. 
For to certaine Zelants u all Speech of Pacification is odious. Is 
it peace, Jehu ? What hast thou to doe with peace ? turne thee 
behinde me. 12 Peace is not the Matter, but Following and Party. 
Contrariwise, certaine Zaodiceans, and Luke-warme Persons, thinke 
they may accommodate Points of Religion by Middle-Waies and 
taking part of both ; And witty Reconcilements ; As if they would 
make an Arbitrement betweene God and Man. Both these Ex- 
tremes are to be avoyded \ which will be done, if the League of 
Christians, penned by our Saviour himselfe, were in the two crosse 
Clauses thereof soundly and plainly expounded ; He that is not 
with us, is against us : 13 And againe ; He that is not against us, 
is with us : u That is, if the Points Fundamentall and of Substance 
in Religion were truly discerned and distinguished from Points not 
meerely of Faith, but of Opinion, Order, or good Intention. This 
is a Thing may seeme to Many a Matter triviall, and done already : 
But if it were done lesse partially, it would be embraced more 
generally. 

Of this I may give onely this Advice, according to my small 
Modell. Men ought to take heede of rending God's Church by 
two kinds of Controversies. The one is, when the Matter of the 
Point controverted is too small and light, not worth the Heat and 
Strife about it kindled onely by Contradiction. For, as it is noted 
by one of the Fathers ; Christs Coat, indeed, had no seame : But 

scription of the Morris-dance. See also Hone's Ancient Mysteries Described, 
p. 268, for plate of a FooVs Morris Dance, etched by Cruikshank. 

10 is of great importance. n zealots. 12 2 Kings ix. 18. 

13 Matt. xii. 30. 14 Mark ix. 40. 



70 FRANCIS BACON. 

the Churches Vesture was of divers colours ; i5 whereupon he saith, 
hi veste varietas sit, Scissura non sit; 16 They be two Things, 
Unity and Uniformity. The other is, when the Matter of the 
Point Controverted is great ; but it is driven to an over-great 
Subtility and Obscurity; So that it becommeth a Thing rather 
Ingenious than Substantial!. A man that is of Judgement and 
understanding shall sometimes heare Ignorant Men differ, and 
know well within himselfe that those which so differ meane one 
thing, and yet they themselves would never agree. And if it come 
so to passe in that distance of Judgement, which is betweene Man 
and Man ; Shall wee not thinke that God above, that knowes the 
Heart, doth not discerne that fraile Men, in some of their Contra- 
dictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of both? The 
Nature of such Controversies is excellently expressed by St. Paul 
in the Warning and Precept that he giveth concerning the same, 
Devita prof anas vocuni Novitates, et Oppositiones falsi Nominis 
Scientice} 1 Men create Oppositions, which are not ; And put them 
into new termes, so fixed as whereas the Meaning ought to govern 
the Terme, the Terme in effect governeth the Meaning. There 
be also two false Peaces, or Unities ; The one, when the Peace is 
grounded but upon an implicite ignorance ; For all Colours will 
agree in the Darke : The other, when it is peeced up upon a 
direct Admission of Contraries in Fundamentall Points. For 
Truth and Falshood, in such things, are like the Iron and Clay, 
in the toes of Nabucadnezars Image / 18 They may Cleave, but they 
will not Incorporate. 

Concerning the Meanes of procuring Unity ; Men must beware 
that in the Procuring, or Muniting, of Religious Unity, they doe not 

15 The allusion is to Ps. xlv. 14, where, instead of • in raiment of needle- 
work,' the Vulgate has circumamicta varietatibus, * enveloped with varieties.' 
— Arber. 

16 In raiment let there be variety, but not rents. St. Bernard, Ad Guille- 
htm Abbatem Apologia, pp. 983, 4, ed. 1640. — Arber. 

17 I Tim. vi. 20: ' Avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of 
science falsely so-called.' 18 Dan. ii. ■$■$. 



THE ESS A YES OF VISCOUNT ST. ALB AN. 71 

Dissolve and Deface the Lawes of Charity and of humane Society. 
There be two Swords amongst Christians ; the Spirituall, and 
Temporall; And both have their due Office and place in the 
maintenance of Religion. But we may not take up the Third sword, 
which is Mahomets Sword, or like unto it ; That is, to propagate 
Religion by Warrs, or by Sanguinary Persecutions, to force Con- 
sciences ; except it be in the cases of Overt Scandall, Blasphemy, 
or Intermixture of practize, against the State ; Much lesse to 
Nourish Seditions ; to Authorize Conspiracies and Rebellions ; To 
put the Sword into the Peoples Hands ; And the like ; Tending 
to the Subversion of all Government, which is the Ordinance of 
God. For this is but to dash the first Table against the Second ; 19 
And so to consider Men as Christians, as we forget that they are 
Men. Lucretius the Poet, when he beheld the Act of Agamemnon, 
that could endure the Sacrificing of his owne Daughter, exclaimed ; 

Tantwn relligio potuit stiadere malorum)- 

What would he have said, if he had knowne of the Massacre in 
France, 2 or the Powder Treason of England? 3 He would have 
beene Seven times more Epicure and Atheist then he was. For 
as the Temporall Sword is to bee drawne with great circumspec- 
tion in cases of Religion ; So it is a thing Monstrous, to put into 
the hands of the Common People. Let that bee left unto the 
Anabaptists and other Furies. It was great Blasphemy, when the 
Devill said ; / will asce?id, and bee like the Highest ; 20 But it is 
greater Blasphemy to personate God, and bring him in saying; 
I will descend, and be like the Prince of Darknesse ; And what is 
it better to make the cause of Religion to descend to the cruell 
and execrable Actions of Murthering Princes, Butchery of People, 
and Subversion of States and Governments? Surely, this is to 
bringe Downe the Holy Ghost, in stead of the Likenesse of a 
Dove, in the Shape of a Vulture, or Raven : And to set out of the 
Barke of a Christian Church a Flagge of a Barque of Pirats and 

19 Ex. xxxii. 19. 20 Isa. xiv. 14. 



72 FRANCIS BACON. 

Assassins. Therefore it is most necessary that the Church by 
Doctrine and Decree ; Princes by their Sword ; And all Learnings, 
both Christian and Morall, as by their Mercury Rod ; Doe Damne 
and send to Hell, for ever, those Facts and Opinions, tending to 
the Support of the same ; As hath beene already in good part 
done. Surely in Counsels Concerning Religion, that Counsel of 
the Apostle would be prefixed; Ira hominis non implet justiciam 
Dei} And it was a notable Observation of a wise Father, And no 
lesse ingenuously confessed, That those which held and per swaded 
pressure of Co?isciences, were commonly interessed therei?i them- 
selves for their owne ends. 



IV. 

2. THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 

[Written about 1621.] 

The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh. 

After that Richard, the third of that name, King in fact only, 
but tyrant both in title and regiment, 1 and so commonly termed 
and reputed in all times since, was, by the divine revenge favour- 
ing the design of an exiled man, overthrown and slain at Bosworth- 
fieldj there succeeded in the kingdom the earl of Richmond, 
thenceforth styled Henry the seventh. The King, immediately 
after the victory, as one that had been bred under a devout mother, 
and was in his nature a great observer of religious forms, caused 
Te Deum laudamus to be solemnly sung in the presence of the 
whole army upon the place, and was himself with general applause 
and great cries of joy, in a kind of military election or recognition, 
saluted King. Meanwhile the body of Richard, after many indig- 
nities and reproaches, the diriges 2 and obsequies of the common 
people towards tyrants, was obscurely buried. For though the 
King of his nobleness gave charge unto the friars of Leicester to 
see an honourable interment to be given to it, yet the religious 
people themselves, being not free from the humours of the vulgar, 
neglected it ; wherein nevertheless they did not then incur any 
man's blame or censure : no man thinking any ignominy or con- 
tumely unworthy of him that had been the executioner of King 
Henry the sixth, that innocent Prince, with his own hands ; the 
contriver of the death of the duke of Clarence his brother ; the 
murderer of his two nephews, one of them his lawful King in the 
present, and the other in the future, failing of him, and vehemently 

1 government. 2 funeral hymns, hence dirges. 

73 



74 FRANCIS BACON. 

suspected to have been the impoisoner of his wife, thereby to 
make vacant his bed for a marriage within the degrees forbidden. 
And although he were a Prince in military virtue approved, jealous 
of the honour of the English nation, and likewise a good law- 
maker, for the ease and solace of the common people ; yet his 
cruelties and parricides, in the opinion of all men, weighed down 
his virtues and merits ; and, in the opinion of wise men, even 
those virtues themselves were conceived to be rather feigned and 
affected things to serve his ambition, than true qualities ingenerate 
in his judgment or nature. And therefore it was noted by men 
of great understanding, who seeing his after-acts, looked back 
upon his former proceedings, that even in the time of King Ed- 
ward his brother he was not without secret trains and mines to 
turn envy and hatred upon his brother's government ; as having 
an expectation and a kind of divination, that the King, by reason 
of his many disorders, could not be of long life, but was like to 
leave his sons of tender years ; and then he knew well how easy 
a step it was from the place of a protector and first Prince of the 
blood to the crown. And that out of this deep root of ambition 
it sprung, that as well at the treaty of peace that passed between 
Edward the fourth and Lewis the eleventh of France, concluded 
by interview of both Kings at Piqueny, 3 as upon all other occa- 
sions, Richard, then duke of Gloucester, stood ever upon the side 
of honour, raising his own reputation to the disadvantage of the 
King his brother, and drawing the eyes of all, especially of the 
nobles and soldiers, upon himself; as if the King, by his volup- 
tuous life and mean marriage, were become effeminate and less 
sensible of honour and reason of state than was fit for a King. 
And as for the politic and wholesome laws which were enacted in 
his time, they were interpreted to be but the brocage 4 of an usurper, 
thereby to woo and win the hearts of the people, as being conscious 
to himself that the true obligations of sovereignty in him failed, 
and were wanting. But King Henry, in the very entrance of his 



in 1475. 4 mean practices. 






THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII 75 

reign, and the instant of time when the kingdom was cast into his 
arms, met with a point of great difficulty, and knotty to solve, able 
to trouble and confound the wisest King in the newness of his 
estate ; and so much the more, because it could not endure a 
deliberation, but must be at once deliberated and determined. 
There were fallen to his lot, and concurrent in his person, three 
several titles to the imperial crown. The first, the title of the 
lady Elizabeth, with whom, by precedent pact 5 with the party that 
brought him in, he was to marry. The second, the ancient and 
long disputed title, both by plea and arms, of the house of Lan- 
caster, to which he was inheritor in his own person. The third, 
the title of the sword or conquest, for that he came in by victory 
of battle, and that the king in possession was slain in the field. 
The first of these was fairest, and most likely to give contentment 
to the people, who by two and twenty years reign of King Edward 
the fourth had been fully made capable of the clearness of the 
title of the white rose or house of York; and, by the mild and 
plausible reign of the same King toward his latter time, were 
become affectionate to that line. But then it lay plain before his 
eyes, that if he relied upon that title, he could be but a King at 
courtesy, and have rather a matrimonial than a regal power ; the 
right remaining in his Queen, upon whose decease, either with 
issue or without issue, he was to give place and be removed. And 
though he should obtain by parliament to be continued, yet he 
knew there was a very great difference between a King that hold- 
eth his crown by a civil act of estates, and one that holdeth it 
originally by the law of nature and descent of blood. Neither 
wanted there even at that time secret rumours and whisperings, 
which afterwards gathered strength and turned to great troubles, 
that the two young sons of King Edward the fourth, or one of them, 
which were said to be destroyed in the Tower, were not indeed 
murdered, but conveyed secretly away, and were yet living : which, 
if it had been true, had prevented the title of the lady Elizabeth. 

5 agreement. 



76 FRANCIS BACON. 

On the other side, if he stood upon his own title of the house of 
Lancaster, inherent in his person, he knew it was a title con- 
demned by parliament, and generally prejudged 6 in the common 
opinion of the realm, and that it tended directly to the disin- 
herison 7 of the line of York, held then the indubitate 8 heirs of the 
crown. So that if he should have no issue by the lady Elizabeth, 
which should be descendants of the double line, then the ancient 
flames of discord and intestine wars, upon the competition of 
both houses, would again return and revive. 

As for conquest, notwithstanding Sir William Stanley, after some 
acclamations of the soldiers in the field, had put a crown of orna- 
ment, which Richard wore in the battle and was found amongst 
the spoils, upon King Henry's head, as if there were his chief 
title ; yet he remembered well upon what conditions and agree- 
ments he was brought in ; and that to claim as conqueror, was to 
put as well his own party, as the rest, into terror and fear ; as that 
which gave him power of disannulling of laws, and disposing of 
men's fortunes and estates, and the like points of absolute power, 
being in themselves so harsh and odious, as that William himself, 
commonly called the conqueror, howsoever he used and exercised 
the power of a conqueror to reward his Normans, yet he forebore 
to use that claim in the beginning, but mixed it with a titulary 
pretence, grounded upon the will and designation of Edward the 
confessor. But the King, out of the greatness of his own mind, 
presently cast the die; and the inconveniences appearing unto 
him on all parts, and knowing there could not be any interreign 
or suspension of title, and preferring his affection to his own line 
and blood, and liking that title best which made him independent ; 
and being in his nature and constitution of mind not very appre- 
hensive or forecasting of future events afar off, but an entertainer 
of fortune by the day ; resolved to rest upon the title of Lancaster 
as the main, and to use the other two, that of marriage, and that 
of battle, but as supporters, the one to appease secret discontents, 

6 prejudiced. " disinheriting. 8 undoubted. 



THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 77 

and the other to beat down open murmur and dispute \ not for- 
getting that the same title of Lancaster had formerly maintained 
a possession of three descents in the crown ; and might have 
proved a perpetuity, had it not ended in the weakness and inabil- 
ity of the last prince. Whereupon the King presently that very 
day, being the two and twentieth of August, assumed the style of 
King in his own name, without mention of the lady Elizabeth at 
all, or any relation 9 thereunto. In which course he ever after 
persisted; which did spin him a thread of many seditions and 
troubles. The King, full of these thoughts, before his departure 
from Leicester, dispatched Sir Robert Willoughby to the castle 
of Sheriff- Hutton in Yorkshire, where were kept in safe custody, 
by King Richard's commandment, both the lady Elizabeth, daugh- 
ter of King Edward, and Edward Plantagenet, son and heir to 
George duke of Clarence. This Edward was by the King's war- 
rant delivered from the constable of the castle to the hand of Sir 
Robert Willoughby; and by him with all safety and diligence 
conveyed to the Tower of London, where he was shut up close 
prisoner. Which act of the king's, being an act merely of policy 
and power, proceeded not so much from any apprehension he 
had of doctor Shaw's tale at Paul's cross, 10 for the bastarding of 
Edward the fourth's issues, in which case this young gentleman 
was to succeed, for that fable was ever exploded, but upon a 
settled disposition to depress all eminent persons of the line of 
York. Wherein still the King, out of strength of will or weakness 
of judgment, did use to shew a little more of the party than of the 
King. 

For the lady Elizabeth, she received also a direction to repair 
with all convenient speed to London, and there to remain with 
the Queen dowager her mother ; which accordingly she soon after 
did, accompanied with many noblemen and ladies of honour. In 
the mean season the King set forwards by easy journeys to the 
city of London, receiving the acclamations and applauses of the 

9 reference. 10 See note in Lumby's edition (Pitt Press Series). 



78 FRANCIS BACON. 

people as he went, which indeed were true and unfeigned, as 
might well appear in the very demonstrations and fulness of the 
cry. For they thought generally, that he was a Prince, as ordained 
and sent down from heaven, to unite and put to an end the long 
dissensions of the two houses ; which n although they had had, in 
the times of Henry the fourth, Henry the fifth, and a part of 
Henry the sixth, on the one side, and the times of Edward the 
fourth on the other, lucid intervals and happy pauses; yet they 
did ever hang over the kingdom, ready to break forth into new 
perturbations and calamities. And as his victory gave him the 
knee, so his purpose of marriage with the lady Elizabeth gave him 
the heart ; so that both knee and heart did truly bow before him. 

He on the other side with great wisdom, not ignorant of the 
affections and fears of the people, to disperse the conceit and 
terror of a conquest, had given order, that there should be nothing 
in his journey like unto a warlike march or manner ; but rather 
like unto the progress of a King in full peace and assurance. 

He entered the city upon a Saturday ; as he had also obtained 
the victory upon a Saturday ; which day of the week, first upon 
an observation, and after upon memory and fancy, he accounted 
and chose as a day prosperous unto him. 

The mayor and companies of the city received him at Shore- 
ditch ; whence with great and honourable attendance, and troops 
of noblemen, and persons of quality, he entered the city ; himself 
not being on horseback, or in any open chair or throne, but in a 
close chariot, as one that having been sometimes an enemy to the 
whole state, and a proscribed person, chose rather to keep state, 
and strike a reverence into the people, than to fawn upon them. 

He went first into St. Paul's church, where, not meaning that 
the people should forget too soon that he came in by battle, he 
made offertory of his standards, and had orisons and Te Deu??i 
again sung ; and went to his lodging prepared in the bishop of 
London's palace, where he stayed for a time. 

11 No predicate, as they is inserted afterwards. 



THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 79 

During his abode there, he assembled his council and other 
principal persons, in presence of whom he did renew again his 
promise to marry with the lady Elizabeth. This he did the rather, 
because having at his coming out of Britain M given artificially, for 
serving his own turn, some hopes, in case he obtained the king- 
dom, to marry Anne, inheritress to the duchy of Britain, whom 
Charles the eighth of France soon after married, it bred some 
doubt and suspicion amongst divers that he was not sincere, or 
at least not fixed in going on with the match of England so much 
desired : which conceit also, though it were but talk and discourse, 
did much afflict the poor lady Elizabeth herself. But howsoever 
he both truly intended it, and desired also it should be so believed, 
the better to extinguish envy and contradiction to his other pur- 
poses, yet was he resolved in himself not to proceed to the con- 
summation thereof, till his coronation and a parliament were 
past. The one, lest a joint coronation of himself and his Queen 
might give any countenance of participation of title ; the other, 
lest in the entailing of the crown to himself, which he hoped to 
obtain by parliament, the votes of the parliament might any ways 
reflect upon her. 

About this time in autumn, towards the end of September, there 
began and reigned in the city, and other parts of the kingdom, a 
disease then new : which by the accidents and manner thereof 
they called the sweating sickness. This disease had a swift course, 
both in the sick body, and in the time and period of the lasting 
thereof; for they that were taken with it, upon four and twenty 
hours escaping, were thought almost assured. And as to the time 
of the malice and reign of the disease, ere it ceased ; it began 
about the one and twentieth of September, and cleared up before 
the end of October, insomuch as it was no hindrance to the King's 
coronation, which was the last of October ; nor, which was more, 
to the holding of the parliament, which began but seven days 
after. It was a pestilent fever, but, as it seemeth, not seated in 

12 Brittany. 



80 FRANCIS BACON. 

the veins or humours, for there followed no carbuncle, no purple 
or livid spots, or the like, the mass of the body being not tainted ; 
only a malign vapour flew to the heart, and seized the vital spirits ; 
which stirred nature to strive to send it forth by an extreme sweat. 
And it appeared by experience that this disease was rather a 
surprise of nature than obstinate to remedies, if it were in time 
looked unto. For if the patient were kept in an equal temper, 
both for clothes, fire, and drink, moderately warm, with temperate 
cordials, whereby nature's work were neither irritated by heat, nor 
turned back by cold, he commonly recovered. But infinite per- 
sons died suddenly of it, before the manner of the cure and attend- 
ance was known. It was conceived not to be an epidemic disease, 
but to proceed from a malignity in the constitution of the air, 
gathered by the predispositions of seasons ; and the speedy cessa- 
tion declared as much. 

On Simon and Jude's eve, 13 the King dined with Thomas Bour- 
chier, archbishop of Canterbury and cardinal ; and from Lambeth 
went by land over the bridge to the Tower, where the morrow 
after he made twelve knights bannerets. But for creations he 
dispensed them with a sparing hand. For notwithstanding a field 
so lately fought, and a coronation so near at hand, he only created 
three : Jasper, earl of Pembroke, the King's uncle, was created 
duke of Bedford ; Thomas, the lord Stanley, the King's father-in- 
law, earl of Derby ; and Edward Courtney, earl of Devon ; though 
the King had then nevertheless a purpose in himself to make 
more in time of Parliament ; bearing a wise and decent respect 
to distribute his creations, some to honour his coronation, and 
some his parliament. 

The coronation followed two days after, upon the thirtieth day 
of October, in the year of our Lord 1485 ; at which time Inno- 
cent the eighth was Pope of Rome ; Frederick the third Emperor 
of Almain ; 14 and Maximilian his son newly chosen King of the 
Romans ; Charles the eighth King of France ; Ferdinando and 

13 October 27. 14 Germany. 



THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 81 

Isabella Kings of Spain ; and James the third, King of Scotland : 
with all which Kings and States the King was at that time in good 
peace and amity. At which day also, as if the crown upon his 
head had put perils into his thoughts, he did institute, for the 
better security of his person, a band of fifty archers, under a cap- 
tain, to attend him, by the name of yeomen of his guard : and 
yet, that it might be thought to be rather a matter of dignity, after 
the imitation of what he had known abroad, than any matter of 
diffidence appropriate to his own case, he made it to be under- 
stood for an ordinance not temporary, but to hold in succession 
for ever after. 



This King, to speak of him in terms equal to his deserving, was 
one of the best sort of wonders ; a wonder for wise men. He had 
parts, both in his virtues and his fortune, not so fit for a common 
place, as for observation. Certainly he was religious, both in his 
affection and observance. But as he could see clear, for those 
times, through superstition, so he would be blinded, now and then, 
by human policy. He advanced churchmen • he was tender in 
the privilege of sanctuaries, though they wrought him much mis- 
chief. He built and endowed many religious foundations, besides 
his memorable hospital of the Savoy : and yet was he a great alms- 
giver in secret ; which shewed that his works in public were dedi- 
cated rather to God's glory than his own. He professed always to 
love and seek peace : and it was his usual preface in his treaties, 
that when Christ came into the world, peace was sung • and when 
he went out of the world, peace was bequeathed. And this virtue 
could not proceed out of fear or softness ; for he was valiant 
and active, and therefore, no doubt, it was truly Christian and 
moral. Yet he knew the way to peace was not to seem to be 
desirous to avoid wars : therefore would he make offers and fames 15 
of wars, till he had mended the conditions of peace. It was also 

15 reports. 



82 FRANCIS BACON. 

much, that one that was so great a lover of peace, should be so 
happy in war. For his arms, either in foreign or civil wars, were 
never unfortunate ; neither did he know what a disaster meant. 
The war of his coming in, and the rebellions of the earl of Lincoln, 
and the lord Audley, were ended by victory. The wars of France 
and Scotland, by peaces sought at his hands. That of Britain, by 
accident of the duke's death. The insurrection of the lord Lovel, 
and that of Perkin at Exeter, and in Kent, by flight of the rebels 
before they came to blows. So that his fortune of arms was still 
inviolate : the rather sure, for that in the quenching of the com- 
motions of his subjects, he ever went in person : sometimes reserv- 
ing himself to back and second his lieutenants, but ever in action ; 
and yet that was not merely forwardness, but partly distrust of 
others. 

He did much maintain and countenance his laws ; which, never- 
theless, was no impediment to him to work his will : for it was so 
handled, that neither prerogative nor profit went to diminution. 
And yet as he would sometimes strain up his laws to his preroga- 
tive, so would he also let down his prerogative to his parliament. 
For mint, 16 and wars, and martial discipline, things of absolute 
power, he would nevertheless bring to parliament. Justice was 
well administered in his time, save where the King was party : 
save also, that the council-table intermeddled too much with meum 
and tuum} 1 For it was a very court of justice during his time, 
especially in the beginning ; but in that part both of justice and 
policy, which is the durable part, and cut, as it were, in brass or 
marble, which is the making of good laws, he did excel. And 
with his justice, he was also a merciful prince : as in whose time, 
there were but three of the nobility that suffered ; the earl of War- 
wick, the lord chamberlain, and the lord Audley : though the first 
two were instead of numbers in the dislike and obloquy of the 
people. But there were never so great rebellions, expiated with 
so little blood, drawn by the hand of justice, as the two rebellions 

16 coinage of money. 17 mine and thine. 



THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 83 

of Blackheath and Exeter. As for the severity used upon those 
which were taken in Kent, it was but upon a scum of people. His 
pardons went ever both before and after his sword. But then he 
had withal a strange kind of interchanging of large and inexpected 
pardons, with severe executions : which, his wisdom considered, 
could not be imputed to any inconstancy or inequality ; but either 
to some reason which we do not now know, or to a principle he 
had set unto himself, that he would vary, and try both ways in 
turn. But the less blood he drew, the more he took of treasure. 
And, as some construed it, he was the more sparing in the one, 
that he might be the more pressing in the other ; for both would 
have been intolerable. Of nature assuredly he coveted to accumu- 
late treasure, and was a little poor in admiring riches. The people, 
into whom there is infused, for the preservation of monarchies, a 
natural desire to discharge their princes, 18 though it be with the 
unjust charge of their counsellors and ministers, did impute this 
unto cardinal Morton and Sir Reginald Bray : who, as it after 
appeared, as counsellors of ancient authority with him, did so 
second his humours, as nevertheless they did temper them. 
Whereas Empson and Dudley that followed, being persons that 
had no reputation with him, otherwise than by the servile follow- 
ing of his bent, did not give way only, as the first did, but shape 
him way to those extremities, for which himself was touched with 
remorse at his death, and which his successor renounced and sought 
to purge. This excess of his had at that time many glosses 19 and 
interpretations. Some thought the continual rebellions wherewith 
he had been vexed, had made him grow to hate his people : some 
thought it was done to pull down their stomachs, and to keep them 
low : some, for that he would leave his son a golden fleece : some 
suspected he had some high design upon foreign parts : but those 
perhaps shall come nearest the truth, that fetch not their reasons 
so far off; but rather impute it to nature, age, peace, and a mind 
fixed upon no other ambition or pursuit. Whereunto I should 

18 relieve them from blame. 19 explanations. 



84 FRANCIS BACON. 

add, that having every day occasion to take notice of the necessi- 
ties and shifts for money of other great Princes abroad, it did the 
better, by comparison, set off to him the felicity of full coffers. As 
to his expending of treasure, he never spared charge which his 
affairs required ; and in his buildings was magnificent, but his 
rewards were very limited : so that his liberality was rather upon 
his own state and memory than upon the deserts of others. 

He was of an high mind, and loved his own will and his own 
way : as one that revered himself and would reign indeed. Had 
he been a private man, he would have been termed proud. But 
in a wise Prince, it was but keeping of distance, which indeed he 
did towards all ; not admitting any near or full approach, either 
to his power, or to his secrets : for he was governed by none. His 
Queen, notwithstanding she had presented him with divers chil- 
dren, and with a crown also, though he would not acknowledge it, 
could do nothing with him. His mother he reverenced much, 
heard little. For any person agreeable to him for society, such 
as was Hastings to King Edward the fourth, or Charles Brandon 
after to King Henry the eighth, he had none : except we should 
account for such persons, Fox, and Bray, and Empson, because 
they were so much with him : but it was but as the instrument 
is much with the workman. He had nothing in him of vain- 
glory, but yet kept state and majesty to the height : being sen- 
sible that majesty maketh the people bow, but vainglory boweth 
to them. 

To his confederates abroad he was constant and just, but not 
open. But rather such was his inquiry, and such his closeness, as 
they stood in the light towards him, and he stood in the dark to 
them. Yet without strangeness, but with a semblance of mutual 
communication of affairs. As for little envies, or emulations upon 
sovereign princes, which are frequent with many Kings, he had 
never any ; but went substantially to his own business. Certain it 
is, that though his reputation was great at home, yet it was greater 
abroad. For foreigners that could not see the passages of affairs, 
but made their judgments upon the issues of them, noted that he 



THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII 85 

was ever in strife, and ever aloft. It grew also from the airs which 
the princes and states abroad received from their ambassadors and 
agents here ; which were attending the court in great number : 
whom he did not only content with courtesy, reward, and private- 
ness ; but, upon such conferences as passed with them, put them 
in admiration, to find his universal insight into the affairs of the 
world : which though he did suck chiefly from themselves, yet 
that which he had gathered from them all, seemed admirable to 
every one. So that they did write ever to their superiors in high 
terms, considering his wisdom and art of rule : nay, when they 
were returned, they did commonly maintain intelligence with him. 
Such a dexterity he had to impropriate to himself all foreign 
instruments. 

He was careful and liberal to obtain good intelligence from all 
parts abroad : wherein he did not only use his interest in the 
liegers here, and his pensioners, which he had both in the court 
of Rome, and other the courts of Christendom ; but the industry 
and vigilance of his own ambassadors in foreign parts. For which 
purpose his instructions were ever extreme, curious and articu- 
late ; *° and in them more articles touching inquisition, than 
touching negotiation : requiring likewise from his ambassadors an 
answer, in particular distinct articles, respectively to his questions. 

As for his secret spials, 21 which he did employ both at home 
and abroad, by them to discover what practices and conspiracies 
were against him, surely his case required it ; he had such moles 
perpetually working and casting to undermine him. Neither can 
it be reprehended ; for if spials be lawful against lawful enemies, 
much more against conspirators and traitors. *' But indeed to give 
them credence 22 by oaths or curses, that cannot be well main- 
tained ; for those are too holy vestments for a disguise. Yet 
surely there was this farther good in his employing of these flies 
and familiars ; that as the use of them was cause that many con- 



20 particular. 21 S pi es . 

22 To cause them to be believed to be his enemies. 



86 FRANCIS BACON. 

spiracies were revealed, so the fame and suspicion of them kept, 
no doubt, many conspiracies from being attempted. 

Towards his Queen he was nothing uxorious, nor scarce indul- 
gent ; but companionable and respective, and without jealousy. 
Towards his children he was full of paternal affection, careful of 
their education, aspiring to their high advancement, regular to 
see that they should not want of any due honour and respect, but 
not greatly willing to cast any popular lustre upon them. 

To his council he did refer much, and sat oft in person; know- 
ing it to be the way to assist his power, and inform his judgment. 
In which respect also he was fairly patient of liberty, both of 
advice, and of vote, till himself were declared. He kept a strait 
hand on his nobility, and chose rather to advance clergymen and 
lawyers, which were more obsequious to him, but had less interest 
in the people ; which made for his absoluteness, but not for his 
safety. Insomuch as, I am persuaded, it was one of the causes 
of his troublesome reign ; for that his nobles, though they were 
loyal and obedient, yet did not co-operate with him, but let every 
man go his own way. He was not afraid of an able man, as Lewis 
the eleventh was : but contrariwise, he was served by the ablest 
men that were to be found ; without which his affairs could not 
have prospered as they did. For war, Bedford, Oxford, Surrey, 
Daubeney, Brook, Poynings : for other affairs, Morton, Fox, Bray, 
the prior of Lanthony, Warham, Urswick, Hussey, Frowick, and 
others. Neither did he care how cunning they were that he did 
employ ; for he thought himself to have the master-reach. And 
as he chose well, so he held them up well; for it is a strange 
thing, that though he were a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious, 
and his times full of secret conspiracies and troubles; yet in 
twenty-four years' reign, he never put down, or discomposed 
counsellor, or near servant, save only Stanley the lord chamber- 
lain. As for the disposition of his subjects in general towards 
him, it stood thus with him ; that of the three affections which 
naturally tie the hearts of the subjects to their sovereigns, love, 
fear, and reverence ; he had the last in height, the second in good 



THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 87 

measure, and so little of the first, as he was beholden to the other 
two. 

He was a Prince, sad, 23 serious, and full of thoughts and secret 
observations, and full of notes and memorials of his own hand, 
especially touching persons. As, whom to employ, whom to 
reward, whom to inquire of, whom to beware of, what were the 
dependencies, what were the factions, and the like ; keeping, as 
it were, a journal of his thoughts. There is to this day a merry 
tale ; that his monkey, set on as it was thought by one of his 
chamber, tore his principal note-book all to pieces, when by 
chance it lay forth : whereat the court, which liked not these 
pensive 24 accounts, was almost tickled with sport. 

He was indeed full of apprehensions and suspicions : but as he 
did easily take them, so he did easily check them and master them ; 
whereby they were not dangerous, but troubled himself more than 
others. It is true, his thoughts were so many, as they could not 
well always stand together ; but that which did good one way, did 
hurt another. Neither did he at some times weigh them aright 
in their proportions. Certainly, that rumor which did him so 
much mischief, that the duke of York should be saved, and alive, 
was, at the first, of his own nourishing ; because he would have 
more reason not to reign in the right of his wife. He was affable, 
and both well and fair-spoken ; and would use strange sweetness 
and blandishments of words, where he desired to effect or per- 
suade any thing that he took to heart. He was rather studious 
than learned ; reading most books that were of any worth, in the 
French tongue, yet he understood the Latin, as appeareth in that 
cardinal Adrian and others, who could very well have written 
French, did use to write to him in Latin. 

For his pleasures, there is no news of them : and yet by his 
instructions to Marsin and Stile, touching the Queen of Naples, it 
seemeth he could interrogate well touching beauty. He did by 
pleasures, as great Princes do by banquets, come and look a little 

23 grave. 24 weighty. 



88 FRANCIS BACON. 

upon them, and turn away. For never Prince was more wholly 
given to his affairs, nor in them more of himself: insomuch as in 
triumphs of jousts and tourneys, and balls, and masks, which they 
then called disguises, he was rather a princely and gentle spec- 
tator, than seemed much to be delighted. 

No doubt, in him, as in all men, and most of all in Kings, his 
fortune wrought upon his nature, and his nature upon his fortune. 
He attained to the crown, not only from a private fortune, which 
might endow him with moderation ; but also from the fortune of 
an exiled man, which had quickened in him all seeds of observa- 
tion and industry. And his times being rather prosperous than 
calm, had raised his confidence by success, but almost marred his 
nature by troubles. His wisdom, by often evading from perils, 
was turned rather into a dexterity to deliver himself from dangers, 
when they pressed him, than into a providence to prevent and 
remove them afar off. And even in nature, the sight of his mind 
was like some sights of eyes ; rather strong at hand, than to carry- 
afar off. For his wit increased upon the occasion ; and so much 
the more, if the occasion were sharpened by danger. Again, 
whether it were the shortness of his foresight, or the strength of 
his will, or the dazzling of his suspicions, or what it was ; certain 
it is, that the perpetual troubles of his fortunes, there being no 
more matter out of which they grew, could not have been without 
some great defects and main errors in his nature, customs, and 
proceedings, which he had enough to do to save and help with a 
thousand little industries and watches. But those do best appear 
in the story itself. Yet take him with all his defects, if a man 
should compare him with the Kings his concurrents ' 25 in France 
and Spain, he shall find him more politic than Lewis the twelfth 
of France, and more entire and sincere than Ferdinando of Spain. 
But if you shall change Lewis the twelfth for Lewis the eleventh, 
who lived a little before, then the consort is more perfect. 
For that Lewis the eleventh, Ferdinando, and Henry may be 

25 contemporaries. 



THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 89 

esteemed for the tres ?/iagi 26 of Kings of those ages. To conclude, 
if this King did no greater matters, it was long of 27 himself; for 
what he minded he compassed. 

He was a comely personage, a little above just stature, well and 
straight limbed, but slender. His countenance was reverend, and 
a little like a churchman : and as it was not strange or dark, so 
neither was it winning or pleasing, but as the face of one well dis- 
posed. But it was to the disadvantage of the painter, for it was 
best when he spake. 

His worth may bear a tale or two, that may put upon him 
somewhat that may seem divine. When the lady Margaret his 
mother had divers great suitors for marriage, she dreamed one 
night that one in the likeness of a bishop in pontifical habit did 
tender her Edmund earl of Richmond, the King's father, for her 
husband, neither had she ever any child but the King, though she 
had three husbands. One day when King Henry the sixth, whose 
innocency gave him holiness, was washing his hands at a great 
feast, and cast his eye upon King Henry, then a young youth, he 
said ; " This is the lad that shall possess quietly that, that we now 
strive for." But that, that was truly divine in him, was that he 
had the fortune of a true Christian, as well as of a great King, in 
living exercised, and dying repentant : So as he had an happy 
warfare in both conflicts, both of sin, and the cross. 

He was born at Pembroke castle, and lieth buried at West- 
minster, in one of the stateliest and daintiest monuments of 
Europe, both for the chapel, and for the sepulchre. So that he 
dwelleth more richly dead, in the monument of his tomb, than 
he did alive in Richmond, or any of his palaces. I could wish 
he did the like in this monument of his fame. 

26 three wise men. 2T owing to. 



V. 

BEN JONSON. 

(i 574-1637.) 

TIMBER, OR DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND 
MATTER. 

[Written after 1630.] 

It pleased your lordship of late, to ask my opinion touching 
the education of your sons, and especially to the advancement of 
their studies. To which, though I returned somewhat for the 
present, which rather manifested a will in me, than gave any just 
resolution to the thing propounded ; I have upon better cogitation 
called those aids about me, both of mind and memory, which 
shall venture my thoughts clearer, if not fuller, to your lordship's 
demand. I confess, my lord, they will seem but petty and minute 
things I shall offer to you, being writ for children, and of them. 
But studies have their infancy, as well as creatures. We see in 
men even the strongest compositions had their beginnings from 
milk and the cradle ; and the wisest tarried sometimes about 
apting 1 their mouths to letters and syllables. In their education, 
therefore, the care must be the greater had of their beginnings, to 
know, examine, and weigh their natures ; which though they be 
power in some children to some disciplines ; yet are they naturally 
prompt to taste all by degrees, and with change. For change is 
a kind of refreshing in studies, and infuseth knowledge by way of 
recreation. Thence the school itself is called a play or game ; 
and all letters are so best taught to scholars. They should not be 
affrighted or deterred in their entry, but drawn on with exercise 

1 fitting. 

90 



DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER. 91 

and emulation. A youth should not be made to hate study, before 
he know the causes to love it ; or taste the bitterness before the 
sweet ; but called on and allured, intreated and praised ; yea, 
when he deserves it not. For which cause I wish them sent to the 
best school, and a public, which I think the best. Your lordship, 
I fear, hardly hears of that, as willing to breed them in your eye, 
and at home, and doubting their manners may be corrupted 
abroad. They are in more danger in your own family, among 
ill servants, (allowing they be safe in their school-master) than 
amongst a thousand boys, however immodest. Would we did not 
spoil our own children, and overthrow their manners ourselves by 
too much indulgence ! To breed them at home, is to breed them 
in a shade ; where in a school they have the light and heat of the 
sun. 

They are used and accustomed to things and men. When they 
come forth into the commonwealth, they find nothing new, or to 
seek. They have made their friendships and aids, some to last 
their age. They hear what is commanded to others as well as 
themselves. Much approved, much corrected ; all which they 
bring to their own store and use, and learn as much as they hear. 
Eloquence would be but a poor thing, if we should only converse 
with singulars ; 2 speak but man and man together. Therefore I 
like no private breeding. I would send them where their industry 
should be daily increased by praise ; and that kindled by emula- 
tion. It is a good thing to inflame the mind, and though ambition 
itself be a vice, it is often the cause of great virtue. Give me 
that wit whom praise excites, glory puts on, or disgrace grieves ; 
he is to be nourished with ambition, pricked forward with honour, 
checked with reprehension, and never to be suspected of sloth. 
Though he be given to play, it is a sign of spirit and liveliness, so 
there be a mean had of their sports and relaxations. And from 
the rod and ferule, I would have them free, as from the menace of 
them ; for it is both deformed 3 and servile. 

2 single persons. 3 degrading. 



92 BEX J OX SOX. 

De stylo, et Optimo scribendi genere} For a man to write well, 
there are required three necessaries : to read the best authors, 
observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style. 
In style to consider what ought to be written, and after what 
manner ; he must first think and excogitate his matter, then 
choose his words, and examine the weight of either. Then take 
care in placing and ranking both matter and words, that the com- 
position be comely, and to do this with diligence and often. No 
matter how slow the style be at first, so it be laboured and accu- 
rate ; seek the best, and be not glad of the fro ward conceits, 
or first words, that offer themselves to us, but judge of what we 
invent, and order what we approve. Repeat often what we have 
formerly written ; which 5 beside that it helps the consequence, and 
makes the juncture better, it quickens the heat of imagination, 
that often cools in the time of setting down, and gives it new 
strength, as if it grew lustier by the going back. As we see in the 
contention of leaping, they jump farthest, that fetch their race 
largest ; or, as in throwing a dart or javelin, we force back our 
arms, to make our loose the stronger. Yet, if we have a fair gale 
of wind, I forbid not the steering out of our sail, so the favour of 
the gale deceive us not. For all that we invent doth please us in 
conception of birth, else we would never set it down. But the 
safest is to return to our judgment, and handle over again those 
things, the easiness of which might make them justly suspected. 
So did the best writers in their beginnings ; they imposed upon 
themselves care and industry; they did nothing rashly; they 
obtained first to write well, and then custom made it easy and a 
habit. By little and little their matter shewed itself to them more 
plentifully ; their words answered, their composition followed ; and 
all, as in a well-ordered family, presented itself in the place. So 
that the sum of all is, ready writing makes not good writing ; but 
good writing brings on ready writing ; yet, when we think we have 
got the faculty, it is even then good to resist it ; as to give a horse 

4 On style, and the best kind of "writing. 5 No predicate, as often. 



DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER. 93 

a check sometimes with a bit, which does not so much stop his 
course, as stir his mettle. Again, whether a man's genius is best 
able to reach thither, it should more and more contend, lift, and 
dilate itself, as men of low stature raise themselves on their toes, 
and so oft-times get even, if not eminent. Besides, as it is fit for 
grown and able writers to stand of themselves, and work with 
their own strength, to trust and endeavour by their own faculties : 
so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study others 
and the best. For the mind and memory are more sharply 
exercised in comprehending another man's things than our 
own ; and such as accustom themselves, and are familiar with the 
best authors, shall ever and anon find somewhat of them in them- 
selves, and in the expression of their minds, even when they feel 
it not, be able to utter something like theirs, which hath an 
authority above their own. Nay, sometimes it is the reward of a 
man's study, the praise of quoting another man fitly ; and though 
a man be more prone, and able for one kind of writing than 
another, yet he must exercise all. For as in an instrument, so in 
style, there must be a harmony and consent of parts. 

I take this labour in teaching others, that they should not be 
always to be taught, and I would bring my precepts into practice : 
for rules are ever of less force and value than experiments : yet 
with this purpose, rather to show the right way to those that come 
after, than to detect any that have slipt before by error, and I 
hope it will be more profitable. For men do more willingly listen, 
and with more favour to precept, than reprehension. Among 
divers opinions of an art, and most of them contrary in them- 
selves, it is hard to make election ; and therefore though a man 
cannot invent new things after so many, he may do a welcome 
work yet to help posterity to judge rightly of the old. But arts 
and precepts avail nothing, except nature be beneficial and aiding. 
And therefore these things are no more written to a dull disposi- 
tion, than rules of husbandry to a soil. No precepts will profit a 
fool, no more than beauty will the blind, or music the deaf. As 
we should take care that our style in writing be neither dry nor 



94 BEN JONSON 

empty ; we should look again it be not winding, or wanton with 
far-fetched descriptions ; either is a vice. But that is worse which 
proceeds out of want, than that which riots out of plenty. The 
remedy of fruitfulness is easy, but no labour will help the contrary ; 
I will like and praise some things in a young writer ; which yet, if 
he continue in, I cannot but justly hate him for the same. There 
is a time to be given all things for maturity, and that even your 
country husbandman can teach ; who to a young plant will not 
put the pruning-knife, because it seems to fear the iron, as not 
able to admit the scar. No more would I tell a green writer all 
his faults, lest I should make him grieve and faint, and at last 
despair. For nothing doth more hurt than to make him so afraid 
of all things, as he can endeavour nothing. Therefore youth 
ought to be instructed betimes, and in the best things ; for we 
hold those longest we take soonest : as the first scent of a vessel 
lasts, and the tinct 6 the wool first receives ; therefore a master 
should temper his own powers, and descend to the other's infirm- 
ity. If you pour a glut of water upon a bottle, it receives little 
of it ; but with a funnell, and by degrees, you shall fill many of 
them, and spill little of your own ; to their capacity they will 
all receive and be full. And as it is fit to read the best authors 
to youth first, so let them be of the openest and clearest. 7 As 
Livy before Sallust, Sidney before Donne : and beware of letting 
them taste Gower, or Chaucer at first, lest falling too much in love 
with antiquity, and not apprehending the weight, they grow rough 
and barren in language only. When their judgments are firm, 
and out of danger, let them read both the old and the new ; but 
no less take heed that their new flowers and sweetness do not as 
much corrupt as the others dryness and squalor, if they choose 
not carefully. Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language ; 
yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil read 
Ennius. The reading of Homer and Virgil is counselled by 

6 dye. 

7 Livy, Sallust, Sidney, Donne, Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Virgil, Ennius, 
Homer, Quintilian, Plautus, Terence. — Jonson's note. 



DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER. 95 

Quintilian, as the best way of informing youth, and confirming 
man. For, besides that the mind is raised with the height and 
sublimity of such a verse, it takes spirit from the greatness of the 
matter, and is tincted with the best things. Tragic and lyric 
poetry is good too, and comic with the best, if the manners of 
the reader be once in safety. In the Greek poets, as also in 
Plautus, we shall see the economy and disposition of poems 
better observed than in Terence ; and the latter, who thought the 
sole grace and virtue of their fable the sticking in of sentences, as 
ours do the forcing in of jests. 

We should not protect our sloth with the patronage of difficulty. 
It is a false quarrel against nature, that she helps understanding 
but in a few, when the most part of mankind are inclined by her 
thither, if they would take the pains ; no less than birds to fly, 
horses to run, etc., which if they lose, it is through their own 
sluggishness, and by that means become her prodigies, not her 
children. I confess, nature in children is more patient of labour 
in study, than in age ; for the sense of the pain, the judgment of 
the labour is absent, they do not measure what they have done. 
And it is the thought and consideration that affects us more than 
the weariness itself. Plato was not content with the learning 
that Athens could give him, but sailed into Italy, for Pythagoras' 
knowledge : and yet not thinking himself sufficiently informed, 
went into Egypt, to the priests, and learned their mysteries. He 
laboured, so must we. Many things may be learned together, and 
performed in one point of time : as musicians exercise their 
memory, their voice, their fingers, and sometimes their head and 
feet at once. And so a preacher, in the invention of matter, 
election of words, composition of gesture, look, pronunciation, 
motion, useth all these faculties at once : and if we can express 
this variety together, why should not divers studies, at divers hours, 
delight, when the variety is able alone to refresh and repair us ? 
As when a man is weary of writing, to read ; and then again of 
reading, to write. Wherein, howsoever we do many things, yet are 
we (in a sort) still fresh to what we begin ; we are recreated with 



96 BEN J ON SON. 

change, as the stomach is with meats. But some will say, this 
variety breeds confusion, and makes, that either we lose all, or hold 
no more than the last. Why do we not then persuade husband- 
men that they should not till land, help it with marie, lime and 
compost? plant hop-gardens, prune trees, look to bee-hives, rear 
sheep, and all other cattle at once ? It is easier to do many things 
and continue, than to do one thing long. 

It is not the passing through these learnings that hurts us, but 
the dwelling and sticking about them. To descend to those extreme 
anxieties and foolish cavils of grammarians, is able to break a wit 
in pieces, being a work of manifold misery and vainness, to be 
elementarii senes* Yet even letters are as it were the bank of 
words, and restore themselves to an author, as the pawns of lan- 
guage : but talking and eloquence are not the same : to speak, and 
to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man 
speaks, and out of the observation, knowledge, and the use of things, 
many writers perplex their readers and hearers with mere nonsense. 
Their writings need sunshine. Pure and neat language I love, yet 
plain and customary. A barbarous phrase has often made me out 
of love with a good sense, and doubtful writing hath wracked me 
beyond my patience. The reason why a poet is said that he ought 
to have all knowledges is, that he should not be ignorant of the 
most, especially of those he will handle. And indeed, when the 
attaining of them is possible, it were a sluggish and base thing to 
despair. For frequent imitation of any thing becomes a habit 
quickly. If a man should prosecute as much as could be said of 
every thing, his work would find no end. 

Speech is the only benefit man hath to express his excellency of 
mind above other creatures. It is the instrument of society; 
therefore Mercury, who is the president of language, is called 
Deorum hominumque interpres? In all speech, words and sense 
are as the body and the soul. The sense is, as the life and soul of 

8 premature old men. 

9 Interpreter of gods and men. Cf. Interpres Divum, Virgil, JEneid, 

IV. 377- 



DISCO VERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MA TTER. 97 

language, without which all words are dead. Sense is wrought out 
of experience, the knowledge of human life and actions, or of the 
liberal arts, which the Greeks called 'EvKv/oWcuSaai/. Words are 
the people's, yet there is a choice of them to be made. For Ver- 
borum delectus origo est eloquentice™ They are to be chose accord- 
ing to the persons we make speak, or the things we speak of. 
Some are of the camp, some of the council-board, some of the 
shop, some of the sheep-cote, some of the pulpit, some of the bar, 
&c. And herein is seen their elegance and propriety, when we use 
them fitly, and draw them forth to their just strength and nature, by 
way of translation or metaphor. But in this translation we must 
only serve necessity (JVam temere nihil transfertur a prudenti)} 1 
or commodity, which is a kind of necessity : that is, when we 
either absolutely want a word to express by, and that is necessity ; 
or when we have not so fit a word, and that is commodity ; as 
when we avoid loss by it, and escape obsceneness, and gain in the 
grace and property which helps significance. Metaphors far-fet, 12 
hinder to be understood; and affected, lose their grace. Or 
when the person fetcheth his translations from a wrong place. As 
if a privy-counsellor should at the table take his metaphor from a 
dicing-house, or ordinary, or a vintner's vault ; or a justice of peace 
draw his similitudes from the mathematics, or a divine from a 
bawdy-house, or taverns ; or a gentleman of Northamptonshire, 
Warwickshire, or the Midland, should fetch all the illustrations to 
his country neighbours from shipping, and tell them of the main- 
sheet and the boulin. 13 Metaphors are thus many times deformed. 
. . . All attempts that are new in this kind, are dangerous, and 
somewhat hard, before they be softened with use. A man coins 
not a new word without some peril, and less fruit ; for if it happen 
to be received, the praise is but moderate ; if refused, the scorn is 

10 The choice of words is the source of eloquence. — JULIUS C/ESAR, as stated 
by Cicero, Brutus, chap. 72; quoted also in Dryden's Essay of Dramatic 
Poesy. 

11 For nothing is rashly transferred from what is prudent. 

12 far-fetched. 13 bow-line. 



98 BEN JONSON. 

assured. Yet we must adventure ; for things, at first hard and 
rough, are by use made tender and gentle. It is an honest error 
that is committed, following great chiefs. 

Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public 
stamp makes the current money. But we must not be too fre- 
quent with the mint, every day coining, nor fetch words from the 
extreme and utmost ages j since the chief virtue of a style is per- 
spicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter. 
Words borrowed of antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, 
and are not without their delight sometimes. For they have the 
authority of years, and out of their intermission do win themselves 
a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and 
newness of the past language, is the best. For what was the ancient 
language, which some men so dote upon, but the ancient custom ? 
yet when I name custom, I understand not the vulgar custom \ for 
that were a precept no less dangerous to language than life, if we 
should speak or live after the manners of the vulgar : but that I 
call custom of speech, which is the consent of the learned ; as 
custom of life, which is the consent of the good. Virgil was most 
loving of antiquity ; yet how rarely doth he insert aquai, and 
pic tat / u Lucretius is scabrous and rough in these; he seeks 
them ; as some do Chaucerisms with us, which were better ex- 
punged and banished. Some words are to be culled out for 
ornament and color, as we gather flowers to strew houses, or 
make garlands ; but they are better when they grow to our style ; 
as in a meadow, where though the mere grass and greenness 
delight, yet the variety of flowers doth heighten and beautify. 
Marry we must not play or riot too much with them, as in 
Paronomasies ; nor use too swelling or ill-sounding words ; Qua 
per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt. 15 It is true, there is no sound 
but shall find some lovers, as the bitterest confections are grateful 
to some palates. Our composition must be more accurate in the 

14 Archaic Latin genitives. 

15 Which tumble over rough places and high rocks. — MARTIAL, Epigrams, 
Book XI. 91. 2. 



DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER. 99 

beginning and end than in the midst, and in the end more than in 
the beginning ; for through the midst the stream bears us. And 
this is attained by custom more than care or diligence. We 
must express readily and fully, not profusely. There is a differ- 
ence between a liberal and prodigal hand. As it is a great 
point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out 
all sail ; so to take it in and contract it, is of no less praise, when 
the argument doth ask it. Either of them hath their fitness in the 
place. A good man always profits by his endeavour, by his help, 
yea, when he is absent, nay, when he is dead, by his example and 
memory. So good authors in their style : a strict and succinct 
style is that, where you can take away nothing without loss, and 
that loss to be manifest. 

The brief style is that which expresseth much in little. The 
concise style, which expresseth not enough, but leaves somewhat 
to be understood. The abrupt style, which hath many breaches, 
and doth not seem to end, but fall. The congruent and har- 
monious fitting of parts in a sentence hath almost the fastening 
and force of knitting and connection ; as in stones well squared, 
which will rise strong a great way without mortar. 

Periods are beautiful, when they are not too long ; for so they 
have their strength too, as in a pike or javelin. As we must take 
the care that our words and sense be clear ; so if the obscurity 
happen through the hearer's or reader's want of understanding, 
I am not to answer for them, no more than for their not listening 
or marking ; I must neither find them ears nor mind. But a man 
cannot put a word so in sense, but something about it will illus- 
trate it, if the writer understand himself. For order helps much 
to perspicuity, as confusion hurts. Rectitudo lucem adfert; 
obliquitas et circumditctio offuscat. 16 We should therefore speak 
what we can the nearest way, so as we keep our gait, not leap ; 
for too short may as well be not let into the memory, as too long 
not kept in. Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts 

16 Directness brings light ; crookedness and circumlocution darkens. 



100 BEN JONSON. 

into a riddle : the obscurity is marked, but not the value. That 
perisheth, and is passed by like the pearl in the fable. Our style 
should be like a skein of silk, to be carried and found by the 
right thread, not ravelled and perplexed ; then all is a knot, a 
heap. There are words that do as much raise a style, as others can 
depress it. Superlation and overmuchness amplifies. It may be 
above faith, but never above a mean. It was ridiculous in Ces- 
tius, when he said of Alexander : 

Fremit ocean us, quasi indignetur, quod terras relinquas ; 17 

but propitiously from Virgil : 

— Credas innare revulsas 
Cycladas. ls 

He doth not say it was so, but seemed to be so. Although it 
be somewhat incredible, that is excused before it be spoken. But 
there are hyperboles which will become one language, that will by 
no means admit another. As, Eos esse P. R. exercitus, qui coeHum 
possint perrumpere™ who would say with us, but a madman ? 
Therefore we must consider in every tongue what is used, what 
received. Quintilian warns us, that in no kind of translation, or 
metaphor, or allegory, we make a turn from what we began ; as if 
we fetch the original of our metaphor from sea, and billows, we 
end not in flames and ashes : it is a most foul inconsequence. 
Neither must we draw out our allegory too long, lest either we 
make ourselves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is childish. 
But why do men depart at all from the right and natural ways of 
speaking ? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think 
it fitter to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which 
uttered plainly would offend the hearers. Or to avoid obscene- 

17 The ocean rages as if it were angry because you are leaving the land. 

18 You would think that the Cyclades plucked up were swimming. — Virgil, 
s£neid, VIII. 691, 692. 

19 That the armies of the Roman people are those who can break through 
heaven. — Oesar. 



DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER. 101 

ness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out 
of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a foot-path, or 
the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called 
iaxqixaTLafjievr}, or figured language. 

Language most shews a man : Speak, that I may see thee. 
It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and 
is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders 
a man's form, or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened 
to a man : and as we consider feature and composition in a man, 
so words in language ; in the greatness, aptness, sound, structure, 
and harmony of it. 

Some men are tall and big, so some language is high and great. 
Then the words are chosen, their sound ample, the composition 
full, the absolution plenteous, and poured out, all grave, sinewy, 
and strong. Some are little and dwarfs ; so of speech it is hum- 
ble and low, the words poor and flat, the members and periods 
thin and weak, without knitting or number. 

The middle are of a just stature. There the language is plain 
and pleasing ; even without stopping, round without swelling : all 
well-toned, composed, elegant and accurate. 

The vicious language is vast, and gaping, swelling, and irregular : 
when it contends to be high, full of rock, mountain, and pointed- 
ness : as it affects to be low, it is abject, and creeps, full of bogs 
and holes. And according to their subject these styles vary, and 
lose their names : for that which is high and lofty, declaring 
excellent matter, becomes vast and tumorous, speaking of petty 
and inferior things : so that which was even and apt in a mean 
and plain subject, will appear most poor and humble in a high 
argument. Would you not laugh to meet a great counsellor of 
state in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobby-horse cloak, 
his gloves under his girdle, and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown, 
furred with sables? There is a certain latitude in these things, by 
which we find the degrees. 

The next thing to the stature, is the figure and feature in lan- 
guage ; that is, whether it be round and straight, which consists of 



102 BEN JONSON. 

short and succinct periods, numerous and polished, or square and 
firm, which is to have equal and strong parts every where answer- 
able, and weighed. 

The third is the skin and coat, which rests in the well-joining, 
cementing, coagmentation of words ; when as it is smooth, gentle, 
and sweet, like a table upon which you may run your ringer 
without rubs, and your nail cannot find a joint ; not horrid, rough, 
wrinkled, gaping, or chapt : after these, the flesh, blood, and 
bones come in question. 

We say it is a fleshy style, when there is much periphrasis, and 
circuit of words ; and when with more than enough, it grows fat 
and corpulent ; arvina orationis, full of suet and tallow. It hath 
blood and juice when the words are proper and apt, their sound 
sweet, and the phrase neat and picked. 

But where there is redundancy, both the blood and juice are 
faulty and vicious : Redundat sanguine, quia multb plus dicit, 
quam necesse est.™ Juice in language is somewhat less than blood ; 
for if the words be but becoming and signifying, and the sense 
gentle, there is juice ; but where that wanteth, the language is 
thin, flagging, poor, starved, scarce covering the bone, and shews 
like stones in a sack. 

Some men, to avoid redundancy, run into that ; and while they 
strive to have no ill blood or juice, they lose their good. There be 
some styles again, that have not less blood, but less flesh and cor- 
pulence. These are bony and sinewy ; Ossa habent, et nervos. 21 

It was well noted by the late Lord St. Alban, that the study of 
words is the first distemper of learning ; vain matter the second ; 
and a third distemper is deceit, or the likeness of truth ; impos- 
ture held up by credulity. All these are the cobwebs of learning, 
and to let them grow in us, is either sluttish, or foolish. Nothing 
is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, as the 
schools have done Aristotle. The damage is infinite knowledge 
receives by it ; for to many things a man should owe but a tem- 

20 It abounds in blood [i.e. force] because it says much more than is neces- 
sary. 21 They have bones and sinews. 



DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER. 103 

porary belief, and suspension of his own judgment, not an abso- 
lute resignation of himself, or a perpetual captivity. Let Aristotle 
and others have their dues ; but if we can make farther discov- 
eries of truth and fitness than they, why are we envied ? Let us 
beware, while we strive to add, we do not diminish, or deface ; we 
may improve but not augment. By discrediting falsehood, truth 
grows in request. We must not go about, like men anguished and 
perplexed, for vicious affectation of praise : but calmly study the 
separation of opinions, find the errors have intervened, awake 
antiquity, call former times into question; but make no parties 
with the present, nor follow any fierce undertakers, mingle no 
matter of doubtful credit with the simplicity of truth, but gently 
stir the mould about the root of the question, and avoid all 
digladiations, facility of credit, or superstitious simplicity, seek the 
consonancy, and concatenation of truth ; stoop only to point of 
necessity, and what leads to convenience. Then make exact 
animadversion where style hath degenerated, where flourished 
and thrived in choiceness of phrase, round and clean composition 
of sentence, sweet falling of the clause, varying an illustration 
by tropes and figures, weight of matter, worth of subject, sound- 
ness of argument, life of invention, and depth of judgment. This 
is monte potiri, to get the hill ; for no perfect discovery can be 
made upon a flat or a level. 

Now that I have informed you in the knowing these things, let 
me lead you by the hand a little farther, in the direction of the use, 
and make you an able writer by practice. The conceits of the 
mind are pictures of things, and the tongue is the interpreter of 
those pictures. The order of God's creatures in themselves is not 
only admirable and glorious, but eloquent : then he who could 
apprehend the consequence of things in their truth, and utter his 
apprehensions as truly, were the best writer or speaker. There- 
fore Cicero said much, when he said, Dicere rede nemo potest, nisi 
qui prudenter intelligit. 22 The shame of speaking unskilfully were 

22 No one can speak rightly but one zvho understands wisely. — Cicero. 



104 



BEN yONSON. 



small, if the tongue only thereby were disgraced; but as the 
image of a king, in his seal ill-represented, is not so much a blem- 
ish to the wax, or the signet that sealed it, as to the prince it 
representeth ; so disordered speech is not so much injury to 
the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and inco- 
herence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. Neither 
can his mind be thought to be in tune, whose words do jar ; nor 
his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous ; nor his 
elocution clear and perfect, whose utterance breaks itself into 
fragments and uncertainties. Were it not a dishonour to a mighty 
prince, to have the majesty of his embassage spoiled by a careless 
ambassador? and is it not as great an indignity, that an excellent 
conceit and capacity, by the indiligence of an idle tongue, should be 
disgraced ? Negligent speech doth not only discredit the person 
of the speaker, but it discrediteth the opinion of his reason and 
judgment \ it discrediteth the force and uniformity of the matter 
and substance. If it be so then in words, which fly and escape 
censure, and where one good phrase begs pardon for many in- 
congruities and faults, how shall he then be thought wise, whose 
penning is thin and shallow? how shall you look for wit from 
him, whose leisure and head, assisted with the examination of his 
eyes, yield you no life or sharpness in his writing? 



VI. 

THOMAS FULLER. 

(1608— 1661.) 

THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 

THE HOLY STATE. 
[Written about 1640.] 

Book II. Chapter XVI. 
The Good Schoolmaster. 

There is scarce any profession in the commonwealth more 
necessary, which is so slightly performed. The reasons whereof I 
conceive to be these : First, young scholars make this calling their 
refuge : yea, perchance, before they have taken any degree in the 
University, commence schoolmasters in the country ; as if nothing 
else were required to set up this profession, but only a rod and a 
ferula. Secondly, others, who are able, use it only as a passage to 
better preferment ; to patch the rents in their present fortune, till 
they can provide a new one, and betake themselves to some more 
gainful calling. Thirdly, they are disheartened from doing their 
best, with the miserable reward which in some places they receive, 
— being masters to their children, and slaves to their parents. 
Fourthly, being grown rich, they grow negligent ; and scorn to 
touch the school, but by the proxy of an usher. But see how well 
our schoolmaster behaves himself. 

Maxim I. 

His genius inclines him with delight to his profession. — Some 
men had as lieve be school-boys as school-masters, — to be tied to 
the school as Cooper's " Dictionary " and Scapula's " Lexicon " 

105 



106 THOMAS FULLER. 

are chained to the desk therein ; and, though great scholars, and 

skilful in other arts, are bunglers in this. But God of his goodness 

hath fitted several men for several callings, that the necessity of 

church and state, in all conditions, may be provided for. So that 

he who beholds the fabric thereof may say : " God hewed out this 

stone, and appointed it to lie in this very place ; for it would fit 

none other so well and here it doth most excellent." And thus 

God mouldeth some for a schoolmaster's life ; undertaking it with 

desire and delight, and discharging it with dexterity and happy 

success. 

II. 

He studieth his scholars' natures as carefully as they their books. 
— And ranks their dispositions into several forms. And though it 
may seem difficult for him in a great school to descend to all par- 
ticulars, yet experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a gram- 
mar of boys' natures, and reduce them all (saving some few 
exceptions) to these general rules : — 

i . Those that are ingenious and industrious. — The conjunction 
of two such planets in a youth presage much good unto him. To 
such a lad a frown may be a whipping, and a whipping a death ; 
yea, where their master whips them once, shame whips them all 
the week after. Such natures he useth with all gentleness. 

2. Those that are ingenious and idle. — These think with the 
hare in the fable, that, running with snails, (so they count the 
rest of their school- fellows,) they shall come soon enough to the 
post ; though sleeping a good while before their starting. O ! a 
good rod would finely take them napping ! 

3. Those that are dull and diligent. — Wines, — the stronger 
they be, the more lees they have when they are new. Many boys 
are muddy-headed till they be classified with age ; and such after- 
wards prove the best. Bristol diamonds are both bright, and 
squared, and pointed by nature, and yet are soft and worthless ; 
whereas orient ones, in India, are rough and rugged naturally. 
Hard, rugged, and dull natures of youth acquit themselves after- 
wards the jewels of the country; and, therefore, their dulness at 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 107 

first is to be borne with, if they be diligent. That schoolmaster 
deserves to be beaten himself, who beats nature in a boy for a 
fault. And I question whether all the whipping in the world can 
make their parts which are naturally sluggish, rise one moment 
before the hour [which] nature hath appointed. 

4. Those that are invincibly dull and negligent also. — Correc- 
tion may reform the latter, but not amend the former. All the 
whetting in the world can never set a razor's edge on that which 
hath no steel in it. Such boys he consigneth over to other 
professions. Ship-wrights and boat-makers will choose those 
crooked pieces of timber which other carpenters refuse. Those 
may make excellent merchants and mechanics who will not serve 
for scholars. 

III. 

He is able, diligent, a?id methodical in his teaching. — Not 
leading them rather in a circle than forwards. He minces his 
precepts, for children to swallow; hanging clogs on the nimble- 
ness of his own soul, that his scholars may go along with him. 

IV. 

He is, and will be known to be, an absolute monarch in his 
school. — If cockering 1 mothers proffer him money, to purchase 
their sons an exemption from his rod (to live, as it were, in a 
peculiar, out of their master's jurisdiction,) with disdain he 
refuseth it, and scorns the late custom in some places of com- 
muting whipping into money, and ransoming boys from the rod 
at a set price. If he hath a stubborn youth, correction-proof, he 
debaseth not his authority by contesting with him, but fairly (if 
he can) puts him away, before his obstinancy hath infected 
others. 

V. 

He is moderate in inflicting deserved correction. — Many a 
schoolmaster better answereth the name 7ra.L8oTpi{3r)s than 7rcu8a- 

1 indulgent. 



108 THOMAS FULLER. 

ywyoV rather " tearing his scholars' flesh with whipping, than 
giving them good education." No wonder if his scholars hate 
the Muses, being presented unto them in the shapes of fiends and 
furies. Junius complains, de insole?iti car?iiftcind z of his school- 
master, by whom conscindebatur flagris septies aut octies in dies 
singulos.* Yea, hear the lamentable verses of poor Tusser, in his 
own Life : — 

" From Paul's I went, 
To Eaton sent, 
To learn straightways 
The Latin phrase; 
Where fifty-three 
Stripes given to me 
At once I had. 

" For fault but small, 
Or none at all, 
It came to pass 
Thus beat I was; 
See, Udal, 5 see 
The mercy of thee 
To me, poor lad ! " 

Such an Orbilius mars more scholars than he makes. Their 
tyranny hath caused many tongues to stammer, which spake 
plain by nature, and whose stuttering at first was nothing else but 
fears quavering on their speech at their master's presence ; and 
whose mauling them about their heads hath dulled those who in 
quickness exceeded their master. 

VI. 

He makes his school free to him, who sues to him in forma 
pauperis. 6 — And, surely, learning is the greatest alms that can be 

2 punisher than tutor. 3 of the excessive torture. 

4 He was flogged seven or eight times every day. 

5 Nicholas Udall, head master of Eton College, 1532-43, and author of our 
first comedy, " Ralph Roister Doister." & as a poor boy. 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 109 

given. But he is a beast, who, because the poor scholar cannot 
pay him his wages, pays the scholar in his whipping. Rather are 
diligent lads to be encouraged with all excitements to learning. 
This minds me of what I have heard concerning Mr. Bust, that 
worthy late school-master of Eaton, who would never suffer any 
wandering, begging scholar (such as justly the statute hath ranked 
in the fore-front of rogues) to come into his school, but would 
thrust him out with earnestness, (however privately charitable unto 
him,) lest his school-boys should be disheartened from their 
books, by seeing some scholars, after their studying in the 
University, preferred to beggary. 

VII. 

He spoils not a good school, to make thereof a bad College. — 
Therein to teach his scholars logic. For, besides that logic may 
have an action of trespass against grammar for encroaching on 
her liberties, syllogisms are solecisms taught in the school ; and 
oftentimes they are forced afterwards, in the University, to un- 
learn the fumbling skill they had before. 

VIII. 

Out of his school he is no whit pedantical in carriage or dis- 
course. — Contenting himself to be rich in Latin, though he doth 
not jingle with it in every company wherein he comes. 

To conclude : let this, amongst other motives, make school- 
masters careful in their place, that the eminences of their scholars 
have commended the memories of their school-masters to pos- 
terity, who, otherwise in obscurity, had altogether been forgotten. 
Who had ever heard of R. Bond, in Lancashire, but for the breed- 
ing of learned Ascham his scholar ? or of Hartgrave, in Burnley 
school, in the same country, but because he was the first [who] 
did teach worthy Dr. Whitaker. Nor do I know the memory 
of Mulcaster for anything so much as for his scholar, that gulf 
of learning, Bishop Andrews. This made the Athenians, the 



110 THOMAS FULLER. 

day before the great feast of Theseus their founder, to sacrifice 
a ram to the memory of Corridas, his school-master, that first 
instructed him. 

Book III. Chapter XIII. 

Of Recreatio?is. 

Recreations is a second creation, when weariness hath almost 
annihilated one's spirits. It is the breathing of the soul, which 
otherwise would be stifled with continual business. We may 
trespass in them, if using such as are forbidden by the — lawyer, 
as against the statutes — physician, as against health — divine, as 
against conscience. 

Maxim I. 

Be well satisfied in thy conscience of the lawfulness of the recre- 
ation thou usest. — Some fight against cock-fighting, and bait bull- 
and bear-baiting, because man is not to be a common barrister to 
set the creatures at discord ; and, seeing antipathy betwixt creatures 
was kindled by man's sin, what pleasure can he take to see it 
burn? Others are of the contrary opinion, and that Christianity 
gives us a placard 7 to use these sports ; and that man's character 
of dominion over the creatures enables him to employ them as 
well for pleasure as necessity. In these, as in all other doubtful 
recreations, be well assured, first, of the legality of them. He 
that sins against his conscience, sins with a witness. 

II. 

Spill not the morning {the quintessence of the day f) in recrea- 
tions. — For sleep itself is a recreation. Add not, therefore, 
sauce to sauce ; and he cannot properly have any title to be 
refreshed, who was not first faint. Pastime, like wine, is poison 
in the morning. It is then good husbandry to sow the head, 

7 license. 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. Ill 

which hath lain fallow all night, with some serious work. Chiefly, 
intrench not on the Lord's day to use unlawful sports ; this were 
to spare thine own flock, and to shear God's lamb. 

III. 

Let thy recreations be ingenious, and bear proportion with thine 
age. — If thou sayest with Paul, "When I was a child, I did as a 
child ; " say also with him, "But when I was a man, I put away 
childish things." Wear also the child's coat, if thou usest his 
sports. 

IV. 

Take heed of boisterous and ove?--violent exercises. — Ringing oft- 
times hath made good music on the bells, and put men's bodies out 
of tune ; so that, by over-heating themselves, they have rung their 
own passing-bell. 

V. 

Yet the wider sort of people scarce count anything a sport which 
is not loud and violent. — The Muscovite women esteem none 
loving husbands except they beat their wives. It is no pastime 
with country-clowns that cracks not pates, breaks not shins, bruises 
not limbs, tumbles and tosses not all the body. They think 
themselves not warm in their gears, till they are all on fire ; and 
count it but dry sport, till they swim in their own sweat. Yet I 
conceive the physician's rule in exercises, Ad ruborem, but non 
ad sudorem* is too scant measure. 

VI. 

Refresh that part of thyself which is most wearied. — If thy life 
be sedentary, exercise thy body ; if stirring and active, recreate 
thy mind. But take heed of cozening thy mind, in setting it to 
do a double task, under pretence of giving it a play-day, as in the 
labyrinth of chess, and other tedious and studious games. 

8 to a glow, but not to a sweat. 



112 THOMAS FULLER. 



VII. 



Yet recreations distasteful to some dispositions relish best to 
others. — Fishing with an angle is, to some, rather a torture than 
a pleasure, — to stand an hour as mute as the fish they mean to 
take ; yet herewithal Dr. Whitaker was much delighted. When 
some nobleman had gotten William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, and 
Treasurer of England, to ride with them a-hunting, and the sport 
began to be cold, "What call you this?" said the Treasurer. 
" O ! now," said they, " the dogs are at a fault." " Yea," quoth 
the Treasurer, " take me again in such a fault, and I will give you 
leave to punish me ! " Thus, as soon may the same meat please 
all palates, as the same sport suit with all dispositions. 

VIII. 

Running, leaping, and dancing, the descants on the plain song of 
ivalking, are all excellent exercises. — And yet those are the best 
recreations which, beside refreshing, enable, at least dispose, men 
to some other good ends. Bowling teaches men's hands and 
eyes mathematics and the rules of proportion. Swimming hath 
saved many a man's life, when himself hath been both the wares 
and the ship. Tilting and fencing is war without anger; and 
manly sports are the grammar of military performance. 

IX. 

But, above all, shooting is a noble recreation, and a half liberal 
art. — A rich man told a poor man, that he walked to get a stom- 
ach for his meat. "And I," said the poor man, "walk to get 
meat for my stomach." Now, schooling would have fitted both 
their turns ; it provides food when men are hungry, and helps 
digestion when they are full. King Edward VI, though he drew 
no strong bow, shot very well \ and when once John Dudley, duke 
of Northumberland, commended him for hitting the mark : " You 
shot better," quoth the king, " when you shot off my good uncle 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 113 

Protector's head." But our age sees his successor 9 exceeding 
him in that art ; whose eye, like his judgment, is clear and quick 
to discover the mark, and his hands as just in shooting as in deal- 
ing aright. 

X. 

Some sports, being granted to be lawful, more propend to be ill- 
than well-used. — Such I count stage-plays, when made always the 
actors' work, and often the spectators' recreation. Zeuxis, the 
curious picturer, painted a boy holding a dish full of grapes in his 
hand, done so lively, that the birds, being deceived, flew to pick 
the grapes. But Zeuxis, in an ingenious choler, was angry with 
his own workmanship. "Had I," said he, "made the boy as 
lively as the grapes, the birds would have been afraid to touch 
them." Thus two things are set forth to us in stage-plays : some 
grave sentences, prudent counsels, and punishment of vicious 
examples ; and, with these, desperate oaths, lustful talk, and riot- 
ous acts are so personated to the life, that wantons are tickled 
with delight, and feed their palates upon them. It seems, the 
goodness is not portrayed out with equal accents of liveliness, as 
the wicked things are : otherwise, men would be deterred from 
vicious courses with seeing the woful success which follows them. 
But the main is, wanton speeches on stages are the devil's ordi- 
nance to beget badness ; but I question whether the pious 
speeches spoken there be God's ordinance to increase goodness, 
as wanting both his institution and benediction. 

XI. 

Choke not thy soul with immoderate pouring-in the cordial of 
pleasure. — The creation lasted but six days of the first week. 
Profane they whose recreation lasts seven days every week. 
Rather abridge thyself of thy lawful liberty herein ; it being a wary 
rule which St. Gregory gives us : Solus in illicitis non cadit i qui se 

9 Charles I. 



114 THOMAS FULLER. 

aliquando et a licitis caute restringit; 10 and then recreations shall 
both strengthen labour, and sweeten rest; and we may expect 
God's blessing and protection on us in following them, as well as 
in doing our work. . For he that saith grace for his meat, in it 
prays also to God to bless the sauce unto him. As for those that 
will not take lawful pleasure, I am afraid they will take unlawful 
pleasure, and, by lacing themselves too hard, grow awry on one 
side. 

Book III. Chapter XVIII. 

Of Books. 

Solomon saith truly, " Of making many books, there is no end ; " 
so insatiable is the thirst of men therein : as also endless is the 
desire of many in buying and reading them. But we come to our 
rules : — 

Maxim I. 

7/ is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, 
by getting a great library. — As soon shall I believe every one is 
valiant that hath a well-furnished armory. I guess good house- 
keeping by the smoking, not the number of the tunnels, as know- 
ing that many of them (built merely for uniformity) are without 
chimnies, and more without fires. Once a dunce, void of learn- 
ing but full of books, flouted a library-less scholar with these words : 
Salve, Doctor sine libris f n But the next day, the scholar coming 
into the jeerer's study crowded with books, Salve te, libri, saith 
he, sine Doctore / u 

II. 

Few books, well selected, are best. — Yet, as a certain fool 
bought all the pictures that came out, because he might have his 

10 He alone does not fall in unlawful pleasures who sometimes restrains him- 
self carefully even from lawful ones. 

11 Good-day, Doctor without books ! 12 Good-day, books without a Doctor! 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 115 

choice ; such is the vain humour of many men in gathering of 
books. Yet, when they have done all, they miss their end; it 
being in the editions of authors as in the fashion of clothes, — 
when a man thinks he hath gotten the latest and newest, presently 
another newer comes out. 

III. 

Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of. — Namely, first, 
voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over. 
Secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasion. 
Thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look 
on them you look through them : and he that peeps through the 
casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house. 
But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass 
over authors -of consequence, and only trade in their tables and 
contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten the names of 
all country-gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long 
lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with 
skill in those authors they never seriously studied. 

IV. 

The genius of the author is commonly discovered in the Ded- 
icatory Epistle. — Many place the purest grain in the mouth of 
the sack, for chapmen to handle or buy : and from the dedication 
one may probably guess at the work, saving some rare and peculiar 
exceptions. Thus, when once a gentleman admired how so pithy, 
learned, and witty a dedication was matched to a flat, dull, foolish 
book ; " In truth," said another, " they will be well-matched to- 
gether, for I profess they be nothing akin." 

V. 

Proportion an hour's meditation to an hour's reading of a 
staple author. — This makes a man master of his learning, and dis- 
spirits the book into the scholar. The king of Sweden never filed 



116 THOMAS FULLER. 

his men above six deep in one company, because he would not 
have them lie in useless clusters in his army, but so that every 
particular soldier might be drawn out into service. Books that 
stand thin on the shelves, yet so as the owner of them can bring 
forth every one of them into use, are better than far greater 
libraries. 

VI. 

Learning hath gamed most by those books by which the printers 
have lost. — Arias Montanus, in printing the Hebrew Bible (com- 
monly called " the Bible of the King of Spain," ) much wasted 
himself, and was accused in the Court of Rome for his good deed, 
and being cited thither, Pro tantorum laborum proz7tiio vix veniam 
impetravit} 2. Likewise Christopher Plantin, by printing of his 
curious interlineary Bible in Antwerp, through the unseasonable 
exactions of the kings' officers, sunk and almost ruined his estate. 
And our worthy English knight, who set forth the golden-mouthed 
Father in a silver print, was a loser by it. 14 

VII. 

Whereas foolish pamphlets prove most beneficial to the print- 
ers. — When a French printer complained that he was utterly 
undone by printing a solid, serious book of Rabelais concerning 
physic, Rabelais, to make him recompense, made that his jesting 
scurrilous work, which repaired the printers' loss with advantage. 
Such books the world swarms too much with. When one had set 
out a witless pamphlet, writing Finis at the end thereof, another 
wittily wrote beneath it, — 

"Nay, there thou liest, my friend, 

In writing foolish books there is no end." 

13 Scarcely obtained pardon, instead of a reward for so great labors. 

— Thuanus. 

14 Sir Henry Savile's edition of "The Works of St. Chrysostom " (1613), 
said to have cost upwards of ^8000. — Nichols. 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 117 

And, surely, such scurrilous, scandalous papers do more than con- 
ceivable mischief. First, their lusciousness puts many palates out 
of taste, that they can never after relish any solid and wholesome 
writers. Secondly, they cast dirt on the faces of many innocent 
persons, which, dried on by continuance of time, can never after 
be washed off. Thirdly, the pamphlets of this age may pass for 
records with the next, because publicly uncontrolled ; and what 
we laugh at, our children may believe. Fourthly, grant the 
things true they jeer at, yet this music is unlawful in any Christian 
church, — to play upon the sins and miseries of others ; the fitter 
object of the elegies, than the satires, of all truly religious. 

But what do I, speaking against multiplicity of books in this 
age, who trespass in this nature myself? What was a learned 
man's compliment, may serve for my confession and conclusion : 
Multi met similes hoc morbo laborant, ut cum scribere nesciant, 
ta?nen a scribendo temperare non possint. 15 



Book IV. Chapter XIV. 
The Life of Lady Jane Grey. 

Jane Grey, eldest daughter of Henry Grey, marquess of Dorset, 
and duke of Suffolk, by Frances Brandon, eldest daughter of 
Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, and Mary his wife, youngest 
daughter to king Henry VII, was by her parents bred, according to 
her high birth, in religion and learning. They were no whit indul- 
gent to her in her childhood, but extremely severe, more than 
needed to so sweet a temper ; for what need iron instruments to 
bow wax? 

But as the sharpest Winters, correcting the rankness of the 
earth, cause the more healthful and fruitful Summers; so the 
harshness of her breeding compacted her soul to the greater 

15 Many like myself suffer from this disease, namely that, although they do 
not know how to write, yet they cannot refrain from writing. — ERASMUS. 



118 THOMAS FULLER. 

patience and piety ; so that afterwards she proved the mirror of 
her age, and attained to be an excellent scholar, through the 
teaching of Mr. Aylmer her master. 

Once Mr. Roger Ascham, coming to wait on her at Broadgates 
in Leicestershire, found her in her chamber, reading Phccdon- 
Platonis 16 in Greek, with as much delight as some gentleman 
would have read a merry tale in Boccace, whilst the duke her 
father, with the duchess, and all their household, were hunting in 
the park. He asked of her, how she could lose such pastime ; 
who, smiling, answered : " I wish 17 all the sport in the park is but 
the shadow of what pleasure I find in this book ! " adding, more- 
over, that one of the greatest blessings God ever gave her, was 
in sending her sharp parents, and a gentle school-master, which 
made her take delight in nothing so much as in her studies. 

About this time John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, pro- 
jected for the English crown. But being too low to reach it in 
his own person, (having no advantage of royal birth,) a match was 
made betwixt Guilford, his fourth son, and this lady Jane; the 
duke hoping so to reign in his daughter-in-law, on whom king 
Edward VI, by will, (passing by his own sisters,) had entailed the 
crown ; and, not long after, that godly king, who had some defects, 
but few faults, (and those rather in his age than person,) came to 
his grave ; it being uncertain whether he went, or was sent, 
thither. If the latter be true, " the crying of this saint under the 
altar," beneath which he was buried in king Henry's chapel, 
(without any other monument than that of his own virtues,) hath 
been heard long since, for avenging his blood. 

Presently after, (1553,) lady Jane was proclaimed queen of 
England. She lifted not up her least finger to put the diadem on 
herself; but was only contented to sit still, whilst others endeav- 
oured to crown her ; or rather, was so far from biting at the bait 
of sovereignty, that unwillingly she opened her mouth to receive it. 

16 The Phaedo of Plato. 

17 Ascham (" Scholemaster," Arber's Reprint) has L wis, i.e. surely. 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 119 

Then was the duke of Northumberland made general of an 
army, and sent into Suffolk to suppress the lady Mary, who there 
gathered men to claim the crown. This duke was appointed, 
out of the policy of his friend-seeming enemies, for that employ- 
ment. For those who before could not endure the scorching 
heat of his displeasure at the council-table, durst afterwards 
oppose him, having gotten the screen of London-walls betwixt 
him and them. They also stinted his journeys every day, (thereby 
appointing the steps by which he was to go down to his own 
grave,) that he should march on very slowly, which caused his 
confusion. For, lingering doth tire out treacherous designs, which 
are to be done all on a sudden, and gives breath to loyalty to- 
recover itself. 

His army, like a sheep, left part of his fleece on every bush it 
came by ; at every stage and corner some conveying themselves 
from him, till his soldiers were washed away before any storm of 
war fell upon them. Only some few, who were chained to the 
duke by their particular engagements, and some great persons, 
hopeless to conceal themselves, as being too big for a cover, stuck 
fast unto him. Thus those enterprises need a strong hand, which 
are thrown against the bias of people's hearts and consciences. 
And, not long after, the Norfolk and Suffolk Protestant gentry 
(loyalty always lodgeth in the same breast with true religion !) 
proclaimed and set up queen Mary, who got the crown by " Our 
Father," and held it by Pater nosfer. 18 

Then was the late queen, now lady Jane Grey, brought from a 
queen to a prisoner, and committed to the Tower. She made 
misery itself amiable by her pious and patient behaviour ; adversity, 
her night-clothes, becoming her as well as her day-dressing, by 
reason of her pious deportment. « 

During her imprisonment, many moved her to alter her religion, 
and especially Mr. Feckenham, sent unto her by queen Mary. 

18 "Obtained the crown by the Protestants and held it by the Papists." 

— Nichols. 



120 THOMAS FULLER. 

But how wisely and religiously she answered him, I refer the 
reader to Mr. Fox, where it is largely recorded. 19 

And because I have mentioned that book, wherein this lady's 
virtues are so highly commended, I am not ignorant that, of late, 
great disgrace hath been thrown on that author and his worthy 
work, as being guilty of much falsehood ; chiefly, because some- 
times he makes Popish doctors, well known to be rich in learning, 
to reason very poorly; and the best fencers of their schools, 
worsted and put out of their play by some country poor Protes- 
tants. But let the cavillers hereat know, that it is a great matter 
to have the odds of the weapon (God's word) on their side; — 
not to say anything of supernatural assistance given them. Sure, 
for the main, his book is a worthy work, (wherein the reader may 
rather leave than lack,) and seems to me, like Etna, always 
burning, whilst the smoke hath almost put out the eyes of the 
adverse party; and these Fox's "fire-brands " have brought much 
annoyance to the Romish " Philistines." But it were a miracle, 
if, in so voluminous a work, there were nothing to be justly 
reproved ; so great a pomegranate, not having any rotten kernel, 
must only grow in Paradise. And though, perchance, he held the 
beam at the best advantage for the Protestant party to weigh 
down, yet, generally, he is a true writer, and never wilfully deceiv- 
eth, though he may sometimes be unwillingly deceived. 

To return to the lady Jane : Though queen Mary, of her own 
disposition, was inclined finally to pardon her, yet necessity of 
State was such, as she must be put to death. ... On Tower 
Hill (Feb. 12th, 1553) she most patiently, Christianly, and con- 
stantly yielded to God her soul, which, by a bad way, went to the 
best end. On whom the foresaid iuthor (whence the rest of her 
life may be supplied) bestows thes<£ verses : — 

Nescio tu quibiis es, tec/or, tectums ocellis : 
Hoc scio, quod siccis scribere non potui. 

" What eyes thou read' ;t with, reader, know I not: 
Mine were not dry, when I this story wrote." 

19 Fox's " Acts and Monuments. " 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 121 

She had the innocency of childhood, the beauty of youth, the 
solidity of middle — the gravity of old — age, and all at eighteen ; 
the birth of a princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, 
yet the death of a malefactor, for her parents' offences. I confess, 
I never read of any canonized saint of her name, — a thing 
whereof some Papists are so scrupulous, that they count it an 
unclean and unhallowed thing to be of a name whereof never 
any saint was : which made that great Jesuit, Arthur Faunt, as 
his kinsman tells us, change his Christian name to Lawrence. But 
let this worthy lady pass for a saint ; and let all great ladies, who 
bear her name, imitate her virtues ; to whom I wish her inward 
holiness, but far more outward happiness. 

Yet, lest goodness should be discouraged by this lady's infelicity, 
we will produce another example, which shall be of a fortunate 
virtue. 



Book IV. Chapter XV. 
The Life of Queen Elizabeth. 

We intermeddle not with her description as she was a sovereign 
prince, too high for our pen, and performed by others already, 
though not by any done so fully but that still room is left for the 
endeavours of posterity to add thereunto. We consider her only 
as she was a worthy lady, her private virtues rendering her to the 
imitation, and her public to the admiration of all. 

Her royal birth by her father's side doth comparatively make 
her mother-descent seem low, which otherwise, considered in itself, 
was very noble and honourable. As for the bundle of scandalous 
aspersions by some cast on her birth, they are best to be buried 
without once opening of them. For as the basest rascal will pre- 
sume to miscall the best lord, when far enough out of his hearing ; 
so slanderous tongues think they may run riot in railing on any, 
when once got out of the distance of time, and reach of confu- 
tation. 



122 THOMAS FULLER. 

But majesty, which dieth not, will not suffer itself to be so 
abused, seeing the best assurance which living princes have that 
their memories shall be honourably continued, is founded (next 
to their own deserts) in the maintaining of the unstained reputa- 
tion of their predecessors. Yea, Divine Justice seems herein to be 
a compurgator of the parents of queen Elizabeth ; in that Nich- 
olas Sanders, a Popish priest, the first raiser of these wicked 
reports, was accidentally famished as he roved up and down in 
Ireland ; either because it was just he should be starved, that 
formerly surfeited with lying ; or because that island, out of a nat- 
ural antipathy against poisonous creatures, would not lend life to 
so venomous a slanderer. 

Under the reign of her father, and brother king Edward VI, 
(who commonly called her his " sister Temperance,") she lived 
in a princely fashion. But the case was altered with her, when 
her sister Mary came to the crown, who ever looked upon her 
with a jealous eye and frowning face ; chiefly, because of the 
difference between them in religion. For though queen Mary 
is said of herself not so much to have barked, yet she had under 
her those who did more than bite ; and rather her religion, than 
disposition, was guilty in countenancing their cruelty by her 
authority. 

This antipathy against her sister Elizabeth was increased with 
the remembrance how Catherine dowager, queen Mary's mother, 
was justled out of the bed of Henry VIII by Anna Boleyn, 
mother to queen Elizabeth ; so that these two sisters were born, 
as I may say, not only in several, but opposite horizons ; so that 
the elevation and bright appearing of the one inferred the neces- 
sary obscurity and depression of the other ; and still queen Mary 
was troubled with this fit of the mother, which incensed her 
against this her half-sister. 

To which two grand causes of opposition, this third may also be 
added, because not so generally known, though in itself of lesser 
consequence : Queen Mary had released Edward Courtenay, 
earl of Devonshire, out of the Tower, where long he had been 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 123 

detained prisoner ; a gentleman of a beautiful body, sweet nature, 
and royal descent ; intending him, as it was generally conceived, 
to be a husband for herself. For when the said earl petitioned 
the queen for leave to travel, she advised him rather to marry, 
insuring him that no lady in the land, how high soever, would 
refuse him for a husband ; and, urging him to make his choice 
where he pleased, she pointed herself out unto him as plainly as 
might stand with the modesty of a maid and majesty of a queen. 
Hereupon the young earl — whether because that his long durance 
had some influence on his brain, or that naturally his face was 
better than his head, or out of some private fancy and affection to 
the lady Elizabeth, or out of loyal bashfulness, not presuming to 
climb higher, but expecting to be called up — is said to have 
requested the queen for leave to marry her sister the lady Eliz- 
abeth, unhappy that his choice either went so high or no higher. 
For who could have spoken worse treason against Mary, (though 
not against the queen,) than to prefer her sister before her? 
And she, innocent lady, did afterwards dearly pay the score of 
this earl's indiscretion. For these reasons, lady Elizabeth was 
closely kept, and narrowly sifted, all her sister's reign, sir [Henry] 
Bedingfield, her keeper, using more severity towards her than his 
place required, yea, more than a good man should — or a wise 
man would — have done. No doubt, the least tripping of her foot 
should have cost her the losing of her head, if they could have 
caught her to be privy to any conspiracies. This lady as well 
deserved the title of "Elizabeth the Confessor," as ever Edward 
her ancient predecessor did. Mr. Ascham was a good school- 
master to her, but affliction was a better ; so that it is hard to 
say, whether she was more happy in having a crown so soon, or in 
having it no sooner, till affliction had first laid in her a low — and 
therefore a sure — foundation of humility, for highness to be after- 
wards built thereupon. 

We bring her now from the cross to the crown ; and come we 
now to describe the rare endowments of her mind ; when, behold, 
her virtues almost stifle my pen, they crowd in so fast upon it. 



124 THOMAS FULLER. 

She was an excellent scholar, understanding the Greek, and per- 
fectly speaking the Latin : witness her extempore speech, in 
answer to the Polish ambassador, and another at Cambridge, Et 
si fceminilis iste,meus pudor™ (for so it began,) elegantly making 
the word fcemim'/is : and well might she mint one new word, who 
did refine so much new gold and silver. ' Good skill she had 
in the French and Italian, using interpreters not for need, but 
state. She was a good poet in English, and fluently made verses. 
In her time of persecution, when a Popish priest pressed her very 
hardly to declare her opinion concerning the presence of Christ in 
the sacrament, she truly and warily presented her judgment in 

these verses : — 

" 'Twas God the Word that spake it, 

He took the bread and brake it ; 

And what the Word did make it, 

That I believe, and take it." 

And though, perchance, some may say, " This was but the best 
of shifts, and the worst of answers, because the distinct manner 
of the presence must be believed ; " yet none can deny it to have 
been a wise return to an adversary, who lay at wait for all advan- 
tages. Nor was her poetic vein less happy in Latin. 

When, a little before the Spanish invasion in eighty- eight, [1588,] 
the Spanish ambassador, after a larger representation of his mas- 
ter's demands, had summed up the effect thereof in a tetrastich, 
she instantly in one verse rejoined her answer. We will presume 
to English both, though confessing the Latin loseth lustre by the 

translation. 

Te veto ne pergas bello defender e Belgas : 

Qu<z Dracus eripuit nunc restituantur oportet : 
Quas pater evertit jubeo te condere cellas ; 
Relligio Papoe fac restituatur ad unguem. 

" These to you are our commands : 
Send no help to th' Netherlands : 
Of the treasure took by Drake, 
Restitution you must make : 

20 And if that womanly modesty of mine. 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 125 

And those abbeys build anew, 
Which your father overthrew : 
If for any peace you hope, 
In all points restore the Pope." 

The Queen's extempore return : — 

Ad Grczcas, bone rex,fient mandata, Calendas. 21 

" Worthy king, know, this your will 
At latter Lammas we'll fulfil." 

Her piety to God was exemplary; none more constant or 
devout in private prayers ; very attentive also at sermons, wherein 
she was better affected with soundness of matter, than quaintness 
of expression. She could not well digest the affected over- 
elegancy of such as prayed for her by the title of " Defendress of 
the Faith," and not the " Defender " ; it being no false construc- 
tion, to apply a masculine word to so heroic a spirit. 

She was very devout in returning thanks to God for her constant 
and continual preservations ; for one traitor's stab was scarce put 
by, before another took aim at her. But as if the poisons of 
treason, by custom, were turned natural unto her, by God's pro- 
tection they did her no harm. In any design of consequence, 
she loved to be long and well advised ; but where her resolutions 
once seized, she would never let go her hold, according to her 
motto, Semper eade?n. 22 By her temperance she improved that 
stock of health which nature bestowed on her, using little wine 
and less physic. Her continence from pleasure was admirable ; 
and she the paragon of spotless chastity, whatever some Popish 
priests (who count all virginity hid under a nun's veil) have feigned 
to the contrary. The best is, their words are no slander whose 
words are all slander • so given to railing that they must be dumb 
if they do not blaspheme magistrates. One Jesuit 23 made this 

21 Your commands, good king, will be fulfilled at the Greek kalends, i.e. 
never. 

22 Always the same. 23 Edmond Campian. 



126 THOMAS FULLER. 

false anagram on her name, Elizabeth, Jesabel; false both in matter 
and manner. For, allow it the abatement of H, (as anagrams 
must sue in chancery for moderate favour,) yet was it both une- 
qual and ominous that T, a solid letter, should be omitted, — the 
presage of the gallows whereon this anagrammatist was afterwards 
justly executed. 

Yea, let the testimony of Pope Sixtus V. himself be believed, 
who professed that, amongst all the princes in Christendom, he 
found but two who were worthy to bear command, had they not 
been stained with heresy; namely, Henry IV, king of France, 
and Elizabeth, queen of England. And we may presume that the 
Pope, if commending his enemy, is therein infallible. We come 
to her death, the discourse whereof was more welcome to her from 
the mouth of her private confessor than from a public preacher ; 
and she loved rather to tell herself, than to be told, of her mor- 
tality ; because the open mention thereof made (as she conceived) 
her subjects divide their loyalty betwixt the present and the future 
prince. We need look into no other cause of her sickness than 
old age, being seventy years old, (David's age,) to which no king 
of England since the Conquest did attain. Her weakness was 
increased by her removal from London to Richmond in a cold 
winter day, sharp enough to pierce through those who were armed 
with health and youth. Also melancholy (the worst natural para- 
site, whosoever feeds him shall never be rid of his company !) 
much afflicted her, being given over to sadness and silence. 

Then prepared she herself for another world, being more con- 
stant in prayer and pious exercises than ever before. Yet spake 
she very little to any, sighing out more than she said, and making 
still music to God in her heart. 

And as the red rose, though outwardly not so fragrant, is in- 
wardly far more cordial than the damask, being more thrifty of its 
sweetness, and reserving it in itself; so the religion of this dying 
queen was most turned inward, in soliloquies betwixt God and her 
own soul, though she wanted not outward expressions thereof. 
When her speech failed her, she spake with her heart, tears, eyes, 



THE HOLY STATE AND THE PROFANE STATE. 127 

hands and other signs, so commending herself to God, the best 
Interpreter, who understands what his saints desire to say. Thus 
died queen Elizabeth ; whilst living, the first maid on earth ; and 
when dead, the second in heaven. 

Surely, the kingdom had died with their queen, had not the 
fainting spirits thereof been refreshed by the coming-in of gracious 
king James. She was of person, tall : of hair and complexion, 
fair, well-favoured, but high-nosed ; of limb and feature, neat ; of 
a stately and majestic deportment. She had a piercing eye, 
wherewith she used to touch what metal [mettle] strangers were 
made of, who came into her presence. But as she counted it a 
pleasant conquest, with her majestic look to dash strangers out of 
countenance \ so she was merciful in pursuing those whom she 
overcame ; and afterwards would cherish and comfort them with 
her smiles, if perceiving towardliness and an ingenuous modesty 
in them. She much affected rich and costly apparel ; and if ever 
jewels had just cause to be proud, it was with her wearing them. 



VII. 

JOHN MILTON. 

(1608-1674.) 

AREOPAGITICA ; 

A SPEECH OF MR. JOHN MILTON FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENC'D 
PRINTING, TO THE PARLAMENT OF ENGLAND. 

[■Written in 1644.] 

Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is 
whereof ye are and whereof ye are the governours : a Nation not 
slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute 
to invent, subtle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of 
any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. There- 
fore the studies of learning in her deepest Sciences have bin so 
ancient, and so eminent among us, that Writers of good antiquity 
and ablest judgement have bin perswaded that ev'n the school of 
Pythagoras, and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the old 
Philosophy of this Hand. And that wise and civill Roman, Julius 
Agricola, who govern'd once here for Ccesar, preferr'd the naturall 
wits of Britain before the labour'd studies of the French. Nor is 
it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transilva?iia sends out 
yearly from as farre as the mountainous borders of Russia, and 
beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their stay'd 
men, to learn our language, and our theologic arts. Yet that which 
is above all this, the favour and the love of heav'n we have great 
argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propend- 
ing 1 towards us. Why else was this Nation chos'n before any 
other, that out of her as out of Sion should be proclaim'd and 

1 inclining. 
128 



A RE OP A G I TIC A . 1 29 

sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all 
Eu?-op. And had it not been the obstinat perversenes of our 
Prelats against the divine and admirable spirit of Wicklef, to sup- 
presse him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the 
Bohemian Husse and Jerom, no nor the name of Luther, or of 
Calvin had bin ever known : the glory of reforming all our neigh- 
bours had been compleatly ours. But now, as our obdurat Clergy 
have with violence demean'd 2 the matter, we are become hitherto 
the latest and the backwardest Schollers, of whom 3 God offer'd to 
have made us the teachers. Now once again by all concurrence 
of signs, and by the generall instinct of holy and devout men, as 
they daily and solemnly expresse their thoughts, God is decreeing 
to begin some new and great period in his Church, ev'n to the 
reforming of Reformation it self: what does he then but reveal 
Himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his English- 
men ; I say as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the 
method of his counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast 
City ; a City of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompast 
and surrounded with his protection ; the shop of warre hath not 
there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates * 
and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguer'd Truth, 
then there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious 
lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and idea's where- 
with to present, as with their homage and their fealty the ap- 
proaching Reformation : others as fast reading, trying all things, 
assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could 
a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek 
after knowledge ? What wants there to such a towardly and preg- 
nant soile, but wise and faithfull labourers, to make a knowing 
people, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies? We 
reck'n more then five months yet to harvest ; there need not be 
five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already. 
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be 

2 treated. 3 [of those] of whom. 4 breastplates. 



130 JOHN MILTON. 

much arguing, much writing, many opinions ; for opinion in good 
men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic ter- 
rors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst 
after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirr'd up in 
this City. What some lament of, we rather should rejoice at, 
should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reas- 
sume the ill-deputed care of their Religion into their own hands 
again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one 
another, and som grain of charity might win all these diligences 
to joyn and unite in one generall and brotherly search after Truth ; 
could we but forgoe this Prelaticall tradition of crowding free con- 
sciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. 
I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should come 
among us, wise to discern the mould and temper of a people, and 
how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent 
alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance 
of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pirrhus did, 
admiring the Roman docility and courage, if such were my Epi- 
rots, I would not despair the greatest design that could be at- 
tempted to make a Church or Kingdom happy. Yet these are 
the men cry'd out against for schismaticks and sectaries ; as if, 
while the Temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some 
squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a 
sort of irrationall men who could not consider there must be 
many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the 
timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every 
stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, 
it can but be contiguous in this world ; neither can every peece 
of the building be of one form j nay rather the perfection consists 
in this, that out of many moderat varieties and brotherly dissimili- 
tudes that are not vastly disproportionall arises the goodly and 
the graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and struc- 
ture. Let us therefore be more considerat builders, more wise in 
spirituall architecture, when great reformation is expected. For 
now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great Prophet may 



ARE OP A GITICA. 1 3 1 

sit in heav'n rejoycing to see that memorable and glorious wish of 
his fulfill'd, when not only our sev'nty Elders, but all the Lords 
people are become Prophets. No marvell then though some 
men, and some good men too perhaps, but young in goodnesse, 
as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own 
weaknes are in agony, lest those divisions and subdivisions will 
undoe us. The adversarie again applauds, and waits the hour ; 
when they have brancht themselves out, saith he, small anough 
into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool ! he sees 
not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches : 
nor will beware untill hee see our small divided maniples 5 cutting 
through at every angle of his ill united and unwieldy brigade. 
And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and 
schisms, and that we shall not need that solicitude, honest perhaps 
though over timorous, of them that vex in this behalf, but shall 
laugh in the end at those malicious applauders of our differences, 
I have these reasons to perswade me. 

First, when a City shall be as it were besieg'd and blockt about, 
her navigable river infested, inrodes and incursions round, defi- 
ance and battell oft rumor'd to be marching up ev'n to her walls, 
and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, 
more than at other times, wholly tak'n up with the study of high- 
est and most important matters to be reform'd, should be disput- 
ing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, ev'n to a rarity, 
and admiration, things not before discourst or writ'n of, argues 
first a singular good will, contentednesse and confidence in your 
prudent foresight and safe government, Lords and Commons ; 
and from thence derives it self to a gallant bravery and well 
grounded contempt of their enemies, as if there were no small 
number of as great spirits among us, as his was, who, when Rome 
was nigh besieged by Hanibal, being in the City, bought that 
peece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hanibal himself en- 
campt his own regiment. Next it is a lively and cherfull presage 

5 companies. 



132 JOHN MILTON. 

of our happy success and victory. For as in a body, when the 
blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but 
to rationall faculties, and those in the acutest, and the pertest 6 
operations of wit and suttlety, it argues in what good plight and 
constitution the body is, so when the cheerfulnesse of the people 
is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well 
its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the 
solidest and sublimest points of controversie, and new invention, 
it betok'ns us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but 
casting off the old and wrincl'd skin of corruption to outlive these 
pangs and wax young again, entring the glorious waies of Truth 
and prosperous vertue destined to become great and honourable 
in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and 
puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and 
shaking her invincible locks : Methinks I see her as an Eagle 
muing 7 her mighty youth, and kindling her undazl'd eyes at the 
full midday beam ; purging and unsealing her long abused sight 
at the fountain itself of heav'nly radiance, while the whole noise 
of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twi- 
light, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envi- 
ous gabble would prognosticat a year of sects and schisms. 

What should ye doe then, should ye suppresse all this flowry 
crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing 
daily in this City, should ye set an Oligarchy of twenty ingrossers 8 
over it, to bring a famin upon our minds again, when we shall 
know nothing but what is measur'd to us by their bushel ? Be- 
leeve it, Lords and Commons, they who counsell ye to such a 
suppressing, doe as good as bid ye suppresse yourselves ; and I 
will soon shew how. If it be desir'd to know the immediat cause of 
all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assign'd a 
truer then your own mild, and free, and human government ; it is 
the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and 
happy counsels have purchast us, liberty which is the nurse of all 

6 proudest, highest. 7 renewing by moulting. 8 licensers of the press. 



ARE OP A GITICA. 133 

great wits ; this is that which hath rarify'd and enlightn'd our 
spirits like the influence of heav'n ; this is that which hath enfran- 
chis'd, enlarg'd and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above 
themselves. Ye cannot make us now lesse capable, lesse knowing, 
lesse eagarly pursuing of the truth, unlesse ye first make your 
selves, that made us so, lesse the lovers, lesse the founders of our 
true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formall, and 
slavish, as ye found us ; but you then must first become that which 
ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they were 
from whom ye have free'd us. That our hearts are now more 
capacious, our thoughts more erected to the search and expecta- 
tion of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your, own vertu 
propagated in us ; ye cannot suppresse that unlesse ye reinforce an 
abrogated and mercilesse law, that fathers may dispatch at will 
their own children. And who shall then sticke closest to ye, and 
excite others? not he who takes up amies for cote and conduct, 9 
and his four nobles of Danegelt. 10 Although I dispraise not the 
defence of just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were 
all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely 
according to conscience, above all liberties. 

What would be best advis'd then, if it be found so hurtfull and 
so unequall to suppresse opinions for the newnes, or the unsutable- 
nes to a customary acceptance, will not be my task to say ; I only 
shall repeat what I have learnt from one of your own honourable 
number, a right noble and pious lord, who 11 had he not sacrific'd 
his life and fortunes to the Church and Commonwealth, we 
had not now mist and bewayl'd a worthy and undoubted 
patron of this argument. Ye know him I am sure ; yet I for hon- 
ours sake, and may it be eternall to him, shall name him, the Lord 
Brook. He writing of Episcopacy, and by the way treating of 

9 " To resist illegal taxation for the clothing and conveyance of troops, and 
also for the provision of a navy." — Hales. 

10 Shipmoney; originally money levied by Ethelred II. to buy off the 
Danes. 

11 No predicate, as often in Elizabethan English. 



134 JOHN MILTON. 

sects and schisms, left Ye his vote, or rather now the last words 
of his dying charge, which I know will ever be of dear and hon- 
our'd regard with Ye, so full of meeknes and breathing charity, 
that next to his last testament, who bequeath'd love and peace to 
his Disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard 
words more mild and peacefull. He there exhorts us to hear 
with patience and humility those, however they be miscall'd, that 
desire to live purely, in such a use of Gods Ordinances, as the 
best guidance of their conscience gives them, and to tolerat them, 
though in some disconformity to our selves. The book it self 
will tell us more at large being publisht to the world, and dedi- 
cated to the Parlament by him who both for his life and for his 
death deserves that what advice he left be not laid by without 
perusall. 

And now the time in speciall is, by priviledge to write and 
speak what may help to the furder discussing of matters in agita- 
tion. The Temple of Janus with his two c ontt wet sal faces might 
now not unsignificantly be set open. And though all the windes 
of doctrin were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in 
the field, we do injuriously by licencing and prohibiting to mis- 
doubt her strength. Let her and Falsehc ' 4 grapple ; who ever 
knew Truth put to the wors in a free and open encounter? Her 
confuting is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what 
praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be sent down 
among us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond 
the discipline of Geneva, fram'd and fabric 't already to our hands. 
Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us, there 
be who envy and oppose, if it come not first in at their casements. 
What a collusion is this, whenas we are exhorted by the wise man 
to use diligence, to seek for wisdom as for hidaTn treasures early 
and late, that another order shall enjoyn us to know nothing but 
by statute ! When a man hath bin labouring the hardest labour in 
the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnisht out his findings in all 
their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battell raung'd, 
scatter'd and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his 



ARE OP A GITICA. 135 

adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, 
if he please \ only that he may try the matter by dint of argument, 
for his opponents then to sculk, to lay ambushments, to keep a 
narrow bridge of licencing where the challenger should passe, 
though it be valour anough in shouldiership, is but weaknes and 
cowardise in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth 
is strong next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, no strata- 
gems, no licencings to make her victorious, those are the shifts 
and the defences that error uses against her power : give her but 
room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks 
not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he 
was caught and bound, but then rather she turns herself into all 
shapes except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to 
the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, untill she be adjur'd into 
her own likenes. Yet is it not impossible that she may have more 
shapes then one. What else is all that rank of things indifferent, 
wherein Truth may be on this side, or on the other, without being 
unlike her self? What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of 
those ordinances, that hand writing nayVd to the crosse, what 
great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts 
of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day 
or regards it not, may doe either to the Lord. How many other 
things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conscience, had we 
but charity, and were it not the chief strong hold of our hypocrisie 
to be ever judging one another ? I fear yet this iron yoke of out- 
ward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the 
ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us. We stumble and are 
impatient at the least dividing of one visible congregation from 
another, though it be not in fundamentalls ; and through our for- 
wardnes to suppresse, and our backwardnes to recover any en- 
thrall'd peece of truth out of the gripe of custom, we care not to 
keep truth separated from truth, which is the fiercest rent and 
disunion of all. We doe not see that while we still affect by all 
means a rigid externall formality, we may as soon fall again into a 
grosse conforming stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of 



136 JOHN MILTON. 

wood and hay and shibble forc't and frozen together, which is 
more to the sudden degenerating of a Church then many subdi- 
chotomies 12 of petty schisms. Not that I can think well of every 
light separation, or that all in a Church is to be expected gold and 
silver and pretious stones : it is not possible for man to sever the 
wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other frie ; that must 
be the Angels Ministery at the end of mortall things. Yet if all 
cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be ? this doubt- 
les is more wholsome, more prudent, and more Christian that 
many be tolerated rather than all compell'd. I mean not 
tolerated Popery, and open superstition, which as it extirpats 
all religions and civill supremacies, so it self should be extirpat, 
provided first that all charitable and compassionat means be 
us'd to win and regain the weak and misled : that also which 
is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners no law 
can possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw it self: but those 
neighboring differences, or rather indifferences, are what I speak 
of, whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline, which 
though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of 
Spirit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace. In the 
mean while if any one would write, and bring his helpfull hand to 
the slow-moving Reformation we labour under, if Truth have 
spok'n to him before others, or but seem'd at least to speak, who 
hath so bejesuited us that we should trouble that man with asking 
licence to doe so worthy a deed ? and not consider this, that if it 
come to prohibiting, there is not ought more likely to be prohib- 
ited then truth it self; whose first appearance to our eyes blear'd 
and dimm'd with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and 
unplausible then many errors, ev'n as the person is of many a 
great man slight and contemptible to see to. And what do they 
tell us vainly of new opinions, when this very opinion of theirs, 
that none must be heard but whom they like, is the worst and 
newest opinion of all others ; 13 and is the chief cause why sects 

12 subdivisions. 

13 Survival of the Elizabethan idiom, which has lasted to the present century. 



AREOPAGITICA. 137 

and schisms doe so much abound, and true knowledge is kept at 
distance from us ? Besides yet a greater danger which is in it. 
For when God shakes a Kingdome with strong and healthfull 
commotions to a generall reforming, 'tis not untrue that many 
sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing ; but yet 
more true it is, that God then raises to his own work men of rare 
abilities, and more then common industry not only to look back 
and revise what hath bin taught heretofore, but to gain furder 
and goe on, some new enlightn'd steps in the discovery of truth. 
For such is the order of Gods enlightning his Church, to dispense 
and deal out by degrees his beam, so as our earthly eyes may best 
sustain it. Neither is God appointed and confin'd, where and 
out of what place these his chosen shall be first heard to speak ; 
for he sees not as man sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we 
should devote our selves again to set places, and assemblies, and 
outward callings of men ; planting our faith one while in the old 
Convocation house, and another while in the Chappell at West- 
minster ; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canon- 
iz'd, is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity 
of patient instruction to supple the least bruise of conscience, to 
edifie the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, 
and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices 
that can be there made, no, though Harry the 7. himself there, 
with all his leige tombs about him, should lend them voices from 
the dead, to swell their number. And if the men be erroneous 
who appear to be the leading schismaticks, what witholds us but 
our sloth, our self-will, and distrust in the right cause, that we doe 
not give them gentle meetings and gentle dismissions, that we 
debate not and examin the matter thoroughly with liberall and 
frequent audience ; if not for their sakes, yet for our own, seeing 
no man who hath tasted learning, but will confesse the many 
waies of profiting by those who not contented with stale receits 
are able to manage, and set forth new positions to the world? 
And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as 
in that notion they may serve to polish and brighten the armoury 



138 JQHX MILTON. 

of Truth, ev'n for that respect they were not utterly to be cast 
away. But if they be of those whom God hath fitted for the spe- 
ciall use of these times with eminent and ample gifts, and those 
perhaps neither among the Priests, nor among the Pharisees, and 
we in the hast of a precipitant zeal shall make no distinction, but 
resolve to stop their mouths, because we fear they come with new 
and dangerous opinions, as we commonly fore-judge them ere we 
understand them, no lesse then woe to us, while, thinking thus to 
defend the Gospel, we are found the persecutors. 

There have bin not a few since the beginning of this Parlament, 
both of the Presbytery and others who by their unlicen[c]t books 
to the contempt of an Imprimatur™ first broke that triple ice 
clung about our hearts, and taught the people to see day : I hope 
that none of those were the perswaders to renew upon us this 
bondage which they themselves have wrought so much good by 
contemning. But if neither the check that Moses gave to young 
Joshua, nor the countermand which our Saviour gave to young 
John, who was so ready to prohibit those whom he thought unli- 
cenc't, be not anough to admonish our Elders how unacceptable 
to God their testy mood of prohibiting is, if neither their own 
remembrance what evill hath abounded in the Church by this 
lett 15 of licencing, and what good they themselves have begun by 
transgressing it, be not anough, but that they will perswade, and 
execute the most Dominicati part of the Inquisition over us, and 
are already with one foot in the stirrup so active at suppressing, it 
would be no unequall distribution in the first place to suppresse 
the suppressors themselves ; whom the change of their condition 
hath puft up, more then their late experience of harder times hath 
made wise. 

And as for regulating the Presse, let no man think to have the 
honour of advising ye better then your selves have done in that 
Order publisht next before this, that no book be Printed, unlesse 
the Printers and the Authors name, or at least the Printers, be 

14 license to print. 15 hindrance. 



ARE OP A GTTTCA. 1 39 

registered. Those which otherwise come forth, if they be found 
mischievous and libellous, the fire and the executioner will be the 
timeliest and the most effectuall remedy that mans prevention can 
use. For this authentic Spanish policy 16 of licencing books, if I 
have said ought, will prove the most unlicenc't book it self within 
a short while ; and was the immediat image of a Star-chamber 
decree to that purpose made in those very times when that Court 
did the rest of those her pious works, for which she is now fall'n 
from the Starres with Lucifer. Whereby ye may guesse what 
kinde of State prudence, what love of the people, what care of 
Religion, or good manners there was at the contriving, although 
with singular hypocrisie it pretended to bind books to their good 
behaviour. And how it got the upper hand of your precedent 
Order so well constituted before, if we may beleeve those men 
whose profession gives them cause to enquire most, it may be 
doubted there was in it the fraud of some old patentees and 
monopolizers in the trade of book-selling ; who under pretence of 
the poor in their Company not to be defrauded, and the just 
retaining of each man his severall copy, which God forbid should 
be gainsaid, brought divers glosing colours to the House, which 
were indeed but colours, and serving to no end except it be to 
exercise a superiority over their neighbours, men who doe not 
therefore labour in an honest profession to which learning is in- 
detted, that they should be made other mens vassals. Another 
end is thought was aym'd at by some of them in procuring by 
petition this Order, that having power in their hands, malignant 
books might the easier scape abroad, as the event shews. But of 
these Sophisms and Elenchs 17 of marchandize I skill not : This 
I know, that errors in a good government and in a bad are equally 
almost incident ; for what Magistrate may not be mis-inform'd, 
and much the sooner, if liberty of Printing be reduc't into the 

10 "policy genuinely and really Spanish." — See Hales's note. 
17 " These fallacious arguments urged by the booksellers and their refuta- 
tions." — Hales. 



140 JOHN MILTON. 

power of a few ; but to redresse willingly and speedily what hath 
bin err'd, and in highest autority to esteem a plain advertisement 
more then others have done a sumptuous bribe, is a vertue (hon- 
our'd Lords and Commons) answerable to Your highest actions, 
and whereof none can participat but greatest and wisest men. 



VIII. 
JEREMY TAYLOR. 



(1613-1667.) 

TWENTY-SEVEN SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN 

GROVE. 

[Written in 1651.] 

Sermon IX. 

THE FAITH AND PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS J OR THE RIGHTEOUS 
CAUSE OPPRESSED. 

Part I. 

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of 
God : and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them 
that obey not the Gospel of God? 

And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly 
and the sinner appear? — i Peter iv. 17, 18. 

So long as the world lived by sense, and discourses of natural 
reason, as they were abated with human infirmities, and not at all 
heightened by the Spirit and divine revelations ; so long men took 
their accounts of good and bad by their being prosperous or un- 
fortunate : and amongst the basest and most ignorant of men, that 
only was accounted honest which was profitable ; and he only wise, 
that was rich ; and those men beloved of God, who received from 
him all that might satisfy their lust, their ambition, or their re- 
venge. 

— Falls accede, Deisque, 
Et cole felices, miser os fuge : sidera terra 
Ut distant, ut Jlamma man, sic utile recto} 

1 Approach the fates and the gods, and honor the happy, flee the unhappy ; 
as the stars are distant from the earth, as fire from water, so is the useful from 
the right. — LliCAN, Pharsalia, VIII. 486. 

141 



142 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

But because God sent wise men into the world, and they were 
treated rudely by the world, and exercised with evil accidents, 
and this seemed so great a discouragement to virtue, that even 
these wise men were more troubled to reconcile virtue and misery, 
than to reconcile their affections to the suffering ; God was pleased 
to enlighten their reason with a little beam of faith, or else height- 
ened their reason by wiser principles than those of vulgar under- 
standings, and taught them in the clear glass of faith, or the dim 
perspective of philosophy, to look beyond the cloud, and there to 
spy that there stood glories behind their curtain, to which they 
could not come but by passing through the cloud, and being wet 
with the dew of heaven and the waters of affliction. And accord- 
ing as the world grew more enlightened by faith, so it grew more 
dark with mourning and sorrows. God sometimes sent a light of 
fire, and a pillar of a cloud, and the brightness of an angel, and 
the lustre of a star, and the sacrament of a rainbow, to guide his 
people through their portion of sorrows, and to lead them through 
troubles to rest : but as the Sun of Righteousness approached 
towards the chamber of the east, and sent the harbingers of light 
peeping through the curtains of the night, and leading on the day 
of faith and brightest revelation ; so God sent degrees of trouble 
upon wise and good men, that now, in the same degree in the 
which the world lives by faith, and not by sense, in the same 
degree they might be able to live in virtue even while she lived in 
trouble, and not reject so great a beauty, because she goes in 
mourning and hath a black cloud of Cyprus drawn before her face. 
Literally thus : God first entertained their services, and allured 
and prompted on the infirmities of the infant-world by temporal 
prosperity ; but by degrees changed his method ; and, as men 
grew stronger in the knowledge of God, and the expectations of 
heaven, so they grew weaker in their fortunes, more afflicted in 
their bodies, more abated in their expectations, more subject to 
their enemies, and were to endure the contradiction of sinners, 
and the immission of the sharpnesses of Providence and divine 
economy. 



SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 143 

First, Adam was placed in a garden of health and pleasure, 
from which when he fell, he was only tied to enter into the cove- 
nant of natural sorrows, which he and all his posterity till the flood 
ran through : but in all that period they had the whole wealth of 
the earth before them ; they needed not fight for empires, or 
places for their cattle to graze in; they lived long, and felt no 
want, no slavery, no tyranny, no war ; and the evils that happened, 
were single, personal, and natural ; and no violences were then 
done, but they were like those things which the law calls ' rare 
contingencies ; ' for which as the law can now take no care and 
make no provisions, so then there was no law, but men lived 
free, and rich, and long, and they exercised no virtues but natural, 
and knew no felicity but natural : and so long their prosperity was 
just as was their virtue, because it was a natural instrument 
towards all that which they knew of happiness. But this public 
easiness and quiet, the world turned into sin ; and unless God did 
compel men to do themselves good, they would undo themselves : 
and then God broke in upon them with a flood, and destroyed 
that generation, that he might begin the government of the world 
upon a new stock, and bind virtue upon men's spirits by new 
bands, endeared to them by new hopes and fears. 

Then God made new laws, and gave to princes the power of 
the sword, and men might be punished to death in certain cases, 
and man's life was shortened, and slavery was brought into the 
world and the state of servants : and then war began, and evils 
multiplied upon the face of the earth ; in which it is naturally 
certain that they that are most violent and injurious, prevailed 
upon the weaker and more innocent ; and every tyranny that 
began from Nimrod to this day, and every usurper, was a peculiar 
argument to shew that God began to teach the world virtue by 
suffering ; and that therefore he suffered tyrannies and usurpations 
to be in the world, and to be prosperous, and the rights of men 
to be snatched away from the owners, that the world might be 
established in potent and settled governments, and the sufferers 
be taught all the passive virtues of the soul. For so God brings 



144 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

good out of evil, turning tyranny into the benefits of government, 
and violence into virtue, and sufferings into rewards. And this 
was the second change of the world : personal miseries were 
brought in upon Adam and his posterity, as a punishment of sin 
in the first period \ and in the second, public evils were brought 
in by tyrants and usurpers, and God suffered them as the first 
elements of virtue, men being just newly put to school to infant 
sufferings. But all this was not much. 

Christ's line was not yet drawn forth ; it began not to appear in 
what family the King of sufferings should descend, till Abraham's 
time ; and therefore, till then there were no greater sufferings than 
what I have now reckoned. But when Abraham's family was 
chosen from among the many nations, and began to belong to 
God by a special right, and he was designed to be the father of 
the Messias ; then God found out a new way to try him, even with 
a sound affliction, commanding him to offer his beloved Isaac ; 
but this was accepted, and being intended by Abraham, was not 
intended by God \ for this was a type of Christ, and therefore 
was also but a type of sufferings. And excepting the sufferings of 
the old periods, and the sufferings of nature, and accident, we see 
no change made for a long time after ; but God having established 
a law in Abraham's family, did build it upon promises of health, 
and peace, and victory, and plenty, and riches ; and so long as 
tney did not prevaricate 2 the law of their God, so long they were 
prosperous : but God kept a remnant of Canaanites in the land, 
like a rod held over them, to vex or to chastise them into obedi- 
ence, in which while they persevered, nothing could hurt them ; 
and that saying of David needs no other sense but the letter of its 
own expression, " I have been young, and now am old ; and yet I 
never saw the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their 
bread." The godly generally were prosperous, and a good cause 
seldom had an ill end, and a good man never died an ill death, — 
till the law had spent a great part of its time, and it descended 

2 corrupt. 



SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 145 

towards its declension and period. But, that the great Prince of 
sufferings might not appear upon his stage of tragedies without 
some forerunners of sorrow, God was pleased to choose out some 
good men, and honour them, by making them to become little 
images of suffering. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zachariah, were 
martyrs of the law ; but these were single deaths : Shadrach, 
Meshech, and Abednego, were thrown into a burning furnace, and 
Daniel into a den of lions, and Susanna was accused for adultery ; 
but these were but little arrests of the prosperity of the godly. 
As the time drew nearer that Christ should be manifest, so the 
sufferings grew bigger and more numerous : and Antiochus raised 
up a sharp persecution in the time of the Maccabees, in which 
many passed through the red sea of blood into the bosom of 
Abraham ; and then Christ came. And that was the third period 
in which the changed method of God's providence was perfected : 
for Christ was to do his great work by sufferings, and by sufferings 
was to enter into blessedness ; and by his passion he was made 
Prince of the catholic church, and as our head was, so must the 
members be. God made the same covenant with us that he did 
with his most holy Son, and Christ obtained no better conditions 
for us than for himself; that was not to be looked for ; " The ser- 
vant must not be above his master ; it is well if he be as his 
master j if the world persecuted him, they will also persecute us : " 
and " from the days of John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven 
suffers violence, and the violent take it by force ; " not ' the violent 
doers,' but ' the sufferers of violence ; ' for though the old law 
was established in the provinces of temporal prosperity ; yet the 
Gospel is founded in temporal adversity ; it is directly a cove- 
nant of sufferings and sorrows ; for now T " the time is come that 
judgment must begin at the house of God." That is the sense 
and design of the text •, and I intend it as a direct antimony 3 to 
the common persuasions of tyrannous, carnal, and vicious men, 
who reckon nothing good but what is prosperous : for though that 

3 antidote. 



146 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the 
law, yet the case is now altered, God hath established its contra- 
dictory ; and now every good man must look for persecution, and 
every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and 
patience of holy persons : and, as men do well, and suffer evil, 
so they are dear to God ; and whom he loves most, he afflicts 
most, and does this with a design of the greatest mercy in the 
world. 

i. Then, the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings, not of 
temporal prosperities. This was foretold by the prophets : " A 
fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord ' et irrigabit torren- 
tern spinarum 1 (so it is in the Vulgar Latin), and it shall water 
the torrent of thorns," that is, the state or time of the Gospel, 
which, like a torrent, shall carry all the world before it, and, like a 
torrent, shall be fullest in ill weather ; and by its banks shall grow 
nothing but thorns and briers, sharp afflictions, temporal infelici- 
ties, and persecution. This sense of the words is more fully 
explained in the book of the prophet Isaiah. " Upon the ground 
of my people shall thorns and briers come up ; how much more 
in all the houses of the city of rejoicing?" Which prophecy is 
the same in the style of the prophets, that my text is in the style 
of the Apostles. The house of God shall be watered with the 
dew of heaven, and there shall spring up briers in it : ' Judgment 
must begin there ; ' but how much more ' in the houses of the city 
of rejoicing?' how much more amongst ' them that are at ease in 
Sion,' that serve their desires, that satisfy their appetites, that are 
given over to their own heart's lust, that so serve themselves that 
they never serve God, that ' dwell in the city of rejoicing? ' (They 
are like Dives, whose portion was in this life, ' who went in fine 
linen, and fared deliciously every day : ' they, indeed, trample 
upon their briers and thorns, and suffer them not to grow in their 
houses ; but the roots are in the ground, and they are reserved 
for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning.! Thus, you see, 
it was prophesied, now see how it was performed ; Christ was the 
captain of our sufferings, and he began. 



SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 147 

He entered into the world with all the circumstances of 
poverty. He had a star to illustrate his birth ; but a stable for 
his bedchamber, and a manger for his cradle. The angels sang 
hymns when he was born ; but he was cold and cried, uneasy and 
unprovided. He lived long in the trade of a carpenter ; he, by 
whom God made the world, had, in his first years, the business of 
a mean and ignoble trade. He did good wherever he went, and 
almost wherever he went, was abused. He deserved heaven for 
his obedience, but found a cross in his way thither : and if ever any 
man had reason to expect fair usages from God, and to be dan- 
dled in the lap of ease, softness, and a prosperous fortune, he it 
was only that could deserve that, or anything that can be good. 
But after he had chosen to live a life of virtue, of poverty, and 
labour, he entered into a state of death ; whose shame and trouble 
were great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world. And I 
shall choose to express this mystery in the words of Scripture. 
He died not by a single or a sudden death, but he was the ' Lamb 
slain from the beginning of the world : ' for he was massacred in 
Abel, saith St. Paulinus ; he was tossed upon the waves of the sea 
in the person of Noah ; it was he that went out of his country, 
when Abraham was called from Charran, and wandered from his 
native soil ; he was offered up in Isaac, persecuted in Jacob, be- 
trayed in Joseph, blinded in Samson, affronted in Moses, sawed in 
Isaiah, cast into the dungeon with Jeremiah : for all these were 
types of Christ suffering. And then his passion continued even 
after his resurrection. For it is he that suffers in all his members; 
it is he that ' endures the contradiction of all sinners j ' it is he that 
is ' the Lord of life, and is crucified again, and put to open shame ' 
in all the sufferings of his servants, and sins of rebels, and defi- 
ances of apostates and renegadoes, and violence of tyrants, and 
injustice of usurpers, and the persecutions of his church. It is he 
that is stoned in St. Stephen, flayed in the person of St. Bartholo- 
mew ; he was roasted upon St. Laurence's gridiron, exposed to 
lions in St. Ignatius, burnt in St. Polycarp, frozen in the lake where 
stood forty martyrs of Cappadocia. " Unigenitus enim Dei ad 



148 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

pcragemtum mortis sine sacr amentum consummavit otnne genus 
kumanarum passionum" said St. Hilary; "The sacrament of 
Christ's death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the 
sorrows of humanity." 

All that Christ came for was, or was mingled with, sufferings ; 
for all those little joys which Cod sent, either to recreate his 
person, or to illustrate his office, were abated, or attended with 
afflictions ; Cod being more careful to establish in him the covenant 
of sufferings, than to refresh his sorrows. Presently after the 
angels had finished their hallelujahs, he was forced to fly to save 
his life j and the air became full of the shrieks of the desolate 
mothers of Bethlehem for their dying babes. God had no sooner 
made him illustrious with a voice from heaven, and the descent of 
the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of baptism, but he was 
delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the devil in the 
wilderness. His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory ; but 
then also he entered into a cloud, and was told a sad story what 
he was to suffer at Jerusalem. And upon Palm Sunday, when 
he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, and was adorned with the 
acclamations of a King and a God, he wet the palms with his tears, 
sweeter than the drops of manna, or the little pearls of heaven, 
that descended upon Mount Hermon ; weeping, in the midst of 
this triumph, over obstinate, perishing, and malicious Jerusalem. 
For this Jesus was like the rainbow, which God set in the clouds 
as a sacrament to confirm a promise, and establish a grace ; he 
was half made of the glories of the light, and half of the moisture 
of a cloud ; in his best days he was but half triumph and half 
sorrow : he was sent to tell of his Father's mercies, and that God 
intended to spare us ; but appeared not but in the company or in 
the retinue of a shower, and of foul weather. But I need not tell 
that Jesus, beloved of God, was a suffering person : that which 
concerns this question most, is, that he made for us a covenant of 
sufferings : his doctrines were such as expressly and by consequent 
enjoin and suppose sufferings, and a state of affliction ; his very 
promises were sufferings ; his beatitudes were sufferings \ his 



SERMONS PREACH ED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 149 

rewards, and his arguments to invite men to follow him, were only 
taken from sufferings in this life, and the reward of sufferings 
hereafter. 

For if we sum up the commandments of Christ, we shall find 
humility, — mortification, — self-denial, — repentance, — renounc- 
ing the world, — mourning, — taking up the cross, — dying for 
him, — patience and poverty, — to stand in the chiefest rank of 
( hristian precepts, and in the direct order to heaven : " He that 
will be my disciple, must deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
follow me." We must follow him that was crowned with thorns 
and sorrows, him that was drenched in Cedron, nailed upon the 
cross, that deserved all good, and suffered all evil : that is the sum 
of Christian religion, as it distinguishes from all religions in the 
world. To which we may add the express precept recorded by 
St. James ; " Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep ; let your laughter 
be turned into mourning, and your joy into weeping." You see the 
commandments : will you also see the promises? These they are. 
" In the world ye shall have tribulation; in me, ye shall have 
peace : — Through many tribulations ye shall enter into heaven : 
— He that loseth father and mother, wives and children, houses 
and lands, for my name's sake and the Gospel, shall receive a 
hundred fold in this life, with persecution : " that is part of his 
reward : and, " He chastiseth every son that he receiveth ; — if ye 
be exempt from sufferings, ye are bastards, and not sons." These 
are some of Christ's promises : will you see some of Christ's 
blessings that he gives his church? "Blessed are the poor: 
blessed are the hungry and thirsty : blessed are they that mourn : 
blessed are the humble : blessed are the persecuted." Of the 
eight beatitudes, five of them have temporal misery and mean- 
ness, or an afflicted condition, for their subject. Will you at 
last see some of the rewards which Christ hath propounded to 
his servants, to invite them to follow him ? " When I am lifted 
up, I will draw all men after me:" when Christ is "lifted up, 
as Moses lift up the serpent in the wilderness," that is, lifted 
upon the cross, then " he will draw us after him." — "To you it is 



150 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

given for Christ," saith St. Paul, when he went to sweeten and 
flatter the Philippians : well, what is given to them ? some great 
favours, surely ; true ; " It is not only given you that you believe in 
Christ," though that be a great matter — " but also that you suffer 
for him," that is the highest of your honour. And therefore St. 
James, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye enter into divers 
temptations : " and St. Peter : " Communicating with the suffer- 
ings of Christ, rejoice." And St. James again ; " We count them 
blessed that have suffered : " and St. Paul, when he gives his 
blessing to the Thessalonians, useth this form of prayer ; " Our 
Lord direct your hearts in the charity of God, and in the patience 
and sufferings of Christ." So that if we will serve the King of 
sufferings, whose crown was of thorns, whose sceptre was a reed 
of scorn, whose imperial robe was a scarlet of mockery, whose 
throne was the cross ; we must serve him in sufferings, in poverty 
of spirit, in humility and mortification ; and for our reward we 
shall have persecution, and all its blessed consequents. " Atque 
hoc est esse Christianum" * 

Since this was done in the green tree, what might we expect 
should be done in the dry? Let us, in the next place, consider 
how God hath treated his saints and servants in the descending 
ages of the Gospel : that if the best of God's servants were follow- 
ers of Jesus in this covenant of sufferings, we may not think it 
strange concerning the fiery trial, as if some new thing had hap- 
pened to us. For as the Gospel was founded in sufferings, we 
shall also see it grow in persecutions ; and as Christ's blood did 
cement the corner-stones, and the first foundation ; so the blood 
and sweat, the groans and sighings, the afflictions and mortifica- 
tions, of saints and martyrs, did make the superstructures, and 
must at last finish the building. 

If we begin with the Apostles, who were to persuade the world 
to become Christian, and to use proper arguments of invitations, 
we shall find that they never offered an argument of temporal 



And this is to be a Christian. 






SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 151 

prosperity ; they never promised empires and thrones on earth, 
nor riches, nor temporal power : and it would have been soon 
confuted, if they who were whipt and imprisoned, banished and 
scattered, persecuted and tormented, should have promised sun- 
shine days to others which they could not to themselves. Of all 
the Apostles there was not one that died a natural death but only 
St. John ; and did he escape ? Yes : but he was put into a cauldron 
of scalding lead and oil before the Porta Latina in Rome, and 
escaped death by miracle, though no miracle was wrought to make 
him escape the torture. And, besides this, he lived long in banish- 
ment, and that was worse than St. Peter's chains. " Sane t us Pctrus 
in vinculis, ct Johannes ante Portam Latinam"~° were both days 
of martyrdom, and church-festivals. And after a long and labori- 
ous life, and the affliction of being detained from his crown, and 
his sorrows for the death of his fellow-disciples, he died' full of 
days and sufferings. And when St. Paul was taken into the 
apostolate, his commissions were signed in these words ; " I will 
shew unto him how great things he must suffer for my name : " 
And his whole life was a continual suffering. " Quotidie tnorior" 
was his motto, " I die daily ; " and his lesson that he daily learned 
was, to * know Christ Jesus, and him crucified ; ' and all his joy 
was ' to rejoice in the cross of Christ ; ' and the changes of his 
life were nothing but the changes of his sufferings, and the variety 
of his labours. For though Christ hath finished his own sufferings 
for expiation of the world ; yet there are va-TeprjfxaTa dktytwv, ' por- 
tions that are behind of the sufferings ' of Christ, which must be 
filled up by his body, the church ; and happy are they that put 
in the greatest symbol : for ' in the same measure you are par- 
takers of the sufferings of Christ, in the same shall ye be also 
of the consolation.' And therefore, concerning St. Paul, as it 
was also concerning Christ, there is nothing, or but very little, 
in Scripture, relating to his person and chances of his private 
life, but his labours and persecutions ; as if the Holy Ghost 

5 Saint Peter in chains, and John before the Porta Latina. 



152 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

did think nothing fit to stand upon record for Christ but suf- 
ferings. 

And now began to work the greatest glory of the divine prov- 
idence ; here was the case of Christianity at stake. The world 
was rich and prosperous, learned and full of wise men ; the Gospel 
was preached with poverty and persecution, in simplicity of dis- 
course, and in demonstration of the Spirit : God was on one side, 
and the devil on the other ; they each of them dressed up their 
city; Babylon upon earth, Jerusalem from above. The devil's 
city was full of pleasure, triumphs, victories, and cruelty ; good 
news ; and great wealth ; conquest over kings, and making nations 
tributary : they ' bound kings in chains, and the nobles with links of 
iron ; ' and the inheritance of the earth was theirs : the Romans 
were lords over the greatest part of the world ; and God per- 
mitted to the devil the firmament and increase, the wars and the 
success of that people giving to him an entire power of disposing 
the great change of the world, so as might best increase their 
greatness and power; and he therefore did it, because all the 
power of the Roman greatness was a professed enemy to Chris- 
tianity. And on the other side, God was to build up Jerusalem, 
and the kingdom of the Gospel; and he chose to build it of 
hewn stone, cut and broken ; the Apostles he chose for preachers, 
and they had no learning ; women and mean people were the 
first disciples, and they had no power ; the devil was to lose his 
kingdom, he wanted no malice : and therefore he stirred up, and, 
as well as he could, he made active all the power of Rome, and 
all the learning of the Greeks, and all the malice of barbarous 
people, and all the prejudice and the obstinacy of the Jews, 
against this doctrine and institution, which preached, and prom- 
ised, and brought, persecution along with it. On the one side, 
there was ' scandalum cruris:'*' on the other, ' patientia sanc- 
torum : ' 7 and what was the event ? They that had overcome the 
world, could not strangle Christianity. (But so have I seen the 

6 the offence of the cross. ' the patience of the saints. 



SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 153 

sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the power of 
darkness, and without violence and noise, climbing up the hill, 
hath made night so to retire, that its memory was lost in the joys 
and spritefulness of the morning : and Christianity without vio- 
lence or armies, without resistance and self-preservation, without 
strength or human eloquence, without challenging of privileges 
or fighting against tyranny, without alteration of government and 
scandal of princes, with its humility and meekness, with toler- 
ation and patience, with obedience and charity, with praying and 
dying, did insensibly turn the world into Christian, and persecu- 
tion into victory. 

For Christ, who began, and lived, and died in sorrows, per- 
ceiving his own sufferings to succeed so well, and that ' for suf- 
fering death, he was crowned with immortality,' resolved to take 
all his disciples and servants to the fellowship of the same 
suffering, that they might have a participation of his glory ; know- 
ing, God had opened no gate of heaven but the ' narrow gate,' to 
which the cross was the key. And since Christ now being our 
high-priest in heaven, intercedes for us by representing his passion, 
and the dolours of the cross, that even in glory he might still 
preserve the mercies of his past sufferings, for which the Father 
did so delight in him ; he also designs to present us to God 
dressed in the same robe, and treated in the same manner, and 
honoured with ' the marks of the Lord Jesus ; ' " He hath predes- 
tinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son." And if 
under a head crowned with thorns, we bring to God members 
circled with roses, and softness, and delicacy, triumphant mem- 
bers in the militant church, God will reject us, he will not know 
us who are so unlike our elder brother : for we are members of 
the Lamb, not of the lion ; and of Christ's suffering part, not of 
the triumphant part : and for three hundred years together the 
church lived upon blood, and was nourished with blood ; the 
blood of her own children. Thirty-three bishops of Rome in 
immediate succession were put to violent and unnatural deaths ; 
and so were all the churches of the east and west built ; the cause 



154 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

of Christ and of religion was advanced by the sword, but it was the 
sword of the persecutors, not of resisters or warriors : they were 
' all baptized into the death of Christ ; ' their very profession and 
institution is to live like him, and, when he requires it, to die for 
him \ that is the very formality, the life and essence, of Christian- 
ity. This, I say, lasted for three hundred years, that the prayers, 
and the backs, and the necks of Christians fought against the rods 
and axes of the persecutors, and prevailed, till the country, and 
the cities, and the court itself, was filled with Christians. And by 
this time the army of martyrs was vast and numerous, and the 
number of sufferers blunted the hangman's sword. For Christ 
had triumphed over the princes and powers of the world, before 
he would admit them to serve him ; he first felt their malice, 
before he would make use of their defence ; to shew that it was 
not his necessity that required it, but his grace that admitted kings 
and queens to be nurses of the church. 

And now the church was at ease, and she that sucked the blood 
of the martyrs so long, began now to suck the milk of queens. 
Indeed it was a great mercy in appearance, and was so intended, 
but it proved not so. But then the Holy Ghost, in pursuance of 
the design of Christ, who meant by suffering to perfect his church, 
as himself was by the same instrument, — was pleased, now that 
persecution did cease, to inspire the church with the Spirit of 
mortification and austerity ; and then they made colleges of suffer- 
ers, persons who, to secure their inheritance in the world to come, 
did cut off all their portion in this, excepting so much of it as 
was necessary to their present being; and by instruments of 
humility, by patience under, and a voluntary undertaking of, the 
cross, the burden of the Lord, — by self-denial, by fastings and 
sackcloth, and pernoctations 8 in prayer, they chose then to exer- 
cise the active part of the religion, mingling it as much as they 
could with the suffering. 

And indeed it is so glorious a thing to be like Christ, to be 

8 spending the night. 



SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 155 

dressed like the Prince of the catholic church, who was ' a man of 
sufferings/ and to whom a prosperous and unafflicted person is very 
unlike, that in all ages the servants of God have ' put on the 
armour of righteousness, on the right hand and on the left : ' that 
is, in the sufferings of persecution, or the labours of mortification ; 
in patience under the rod of God, or by election of our own ; by 
toleration, or self-denial ; by actual martyrdom, or by aptness or 
disposition towards it ; by dying for Christ, or suffering for him ; 
by being willing to part with all when he calls for it, and by part- 
ing with what we can for the relief of his poor members. For, 
know this, there is no state in the church so serene, no days so 
prosperous, in which God does not give to his servants the powers 
and opportunities of suffering for him ; not only they that die for 
Christ, but they that live according to his laws, shall find some 
lives to part with, and many ways to suffer for Christ. To kill and 
crucify the old man and all his lusts, to mortify a beloved sin, to 
fight against temptations, to do violence to our bodies, to live 
chastely, to suffer affronts patiently, to forgive injuries and debts, 
to renounce all prejudice and interest in religion, and to choose 
our side for truth's sake (not because it is prosperous, but because 
it pleases God), to be charitable beyond our power, to reprove 
our betters with modesty and openness, to displease men rather 
than God, to be at enmity with the world, that you may preserve 
friendship with God, to deny the importunity and troublesome 
kindness of a drinking friend, to own truth in despite of danger 
or scorn, to despise shame, to refuse worldly pleasures when they 
tempt your soul beyond duty or safety, to take pains in the cause 
of religion, the ' labour of love,' and the crossing of your anger, 
peevishness and morosity : these are the daily sufferings of a 
Christian ; and, if we perform them well, will have the same 
reward, and an equal smart, and greater labour, than the plain 
suffering the hangman's sword. This I have discoursed, to repre- 
sent unto you, that you cannot be exempted from the similitude of 
Christ's sufferings : that God will shut no age nor no man from his 
portion of the cross ; that we cannot fail of the result of this 



156 yERF.MY TAYLOR. 

predestination, nor without our own fault be excluded from the 
covenant of sufferings. ' Judgment must begin at God's house,' 
and enters first upon the sons and heirs of the kingdom ; and if 
it be not by the direct persecution of tyrants, it will be by the 
direct persecution of the devil, or infirmities of our own flesh. 
But because this was but the secondary meaning of the text, I 
return to make use of all the former discourse. 

Let no Christian man make any judgment concerning his con- 
dition or his cause, by the external event of things. For although 
in the law of Moses, God made with his people a covenant of 
temporal prosperity, and " his saints did bind the kings of the 
Amorites, and the Philistines, in chains, and their nobles with 
links of iron," and then, that was the honour which all his saints 
had : yet, in Christ Jesus, he made a covenant of sufferings. 
Most of the graces of Christianity are suffering graces, and God 
hath predestinated us to sufferings, and we are baptized into suf- 
fering, and our very communions are symbols of our duty, by 
being the sacrament of Christ's death and passion; and Christ 
foretold to us tribulation, and promised only that he would be 
with us in tribulation, that he would give us his Spirit to assist us 
at tribunals, and his grace to despise the world, and to contemn 
riches, and boldness to confess every article of the Christian" 
faith, in the face of armies and armed tyrants. And he also 
promised that ' all things should work together for the best to his 
servants,' that is, he would ' out of the eater bring meat, and out 
of the strong issue sweetness,' and crowns and sceptres should 
spring from crosses, and that the cross itself should stand upon 
the globes and sceptres of princes ; but he never promised to his 
servants, that they should pursue kings and destroy armies, that 
they should reign over nations, and promote the cause of Jesus 
Christ, by breaking his commandment. ' The shield of faith, and 
the sword of the Spirit, the armour of righteousness, and the 
weapons of spiritual warfare ; ' these are they by which Christianity 
swelled from a small company, and a less reputation, to possess 
the chairs of doctors, and the thrones of princes, and the hearts 



SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE. 157 

of all men. But men, in all ages, will be tampering with shadows 
and toys. The Apostles at no hand could endure to hear that 
Christ's ' kingdom was not of this world,' and that their Master 
should die a sad and shameful death ; though, that way, he was to 
receive his crown, and ' enter into glory.' And after Christ's 
time, when his disciples had taken up the cross, and were march- 
ing the King's highway of sorrows, there were a very great many, 
even the generality of Christians, for two or three ages together, 
who fell a dreaming that Christ should come and reign upon earth 
again for a thousand years, and then the saints should reign in all 
abundance of temporal power and fortunes : but these men were 
content to stay for it till after the resurrection ; in the meantime, 
took up their cross, and followed after their Lord, the King of 
sufferings. But now-a-days, we find a generation of men who have 
changed the covenant of sufferings into victories and triumphs, 
riches and prosperous chances, and reckon their Christianity by 
their good fortunes ; as if Christ had promised to his servants no 
heaven hereafter, no Spirit in the meantime to refresh their sor- 
rows ; as if he had enjoined them no passive graces ; but, as if to 
be a Christian, and to be a Turk, were the same thing. Mahomet 
entered and possessed by the sword : Christ came by the cross, 
entered by humility : and his saints ' possess their souls in pa- 
tience.' 

God was fain to multiply miracles to make Christ capable of 
being a ' man of sorrows : ' and shall we think he will work 
miracles to make us delicate ? He promised us a glorious portion 
hereafter, to which if all the sufferings of the world were put to- 
gether, they are not worthy to be compared ; and shall we, with 
Dives, choose our portion of ' good things in this life ? ' If Christ 
suffered so many things only that he might give us glory, shall it 
be strange that we shall suffer who are to receive his glory ? It is 
in vain to think we shall obtain glories at an easier rate, than to 
drink of the brook in the way in which Christ was drenched. 
When the devil appeared to St. Martin, in a bright splendid shape, 
and said he was Christ ; he answered, "Christus non nisi in Cruce 



158 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

apparet suis in hac vita." 9 And when St. Ignatius was newly 
tied in a chain to be led to his martyrdom, he cried out, " Nunc 
incipio esse Chris tianus." 10 And it was observed by Minutius 
Felix, and was indeed a great and excellent truth, " Omnes viri 
fortes, quos Gentiles prcedicabant in exemplum, arumnis suis in- 
clyti floruerunt ; " u ' the Gentiles in their whole religion never pro- 
pounded any man imitable, unless the man were poor or perse- 
cuted.' Brutus stood for his country's liberty, but lost his army 
and his life; Socrates was put to death for speaking a relig- 
ious truth ; Cato chose to be on the right side, but happened 
to fall upon the oppressed and the injured ; he died together with 

his party. 

Victrix causa Deis placuit, sedvicta Catoni}' 2 

And if God thus dealt with the best of heathens, to whom he had 
made no clear revelation of immortal recompenses ; how little is 
the faith, and how much less is the patience of Christians, if they 
shall think much to suffer sorrow, since they so clearly see with the 
eye of faith the great things which are laid up for them that are 
1 faithful unto the death ? ' Faith is useless, if now in the midst of 
so great pretended lights, we shall not dare to trust God, unless we 
have all in hand that we desire ; and suffer nothing, for all we can 
hope for. They that live by sense, have no use of faith : yet, our 
Lord Jesus, concerning whose passions the Gospel speaks much, 
but little of his glorifications ; whose shame was public, whose 
pains were notorious, but his joys and transfigurations were secret, 
and kept private ; he who would not suffer his holy mother, whom 
in great degrees he exempted from sin, — to be exempted from 
many and great sorrows, certainly intends to admit none to his 
resurrection but by the doors of his grave, none to glory but by 

9 Christ does not appear to his own in this life except on the cross. 

10 A T ow I begin to be a Christian. 

11 All the brave men whom the Gentiles put forward as an example were 
celebrated for their sufferings. 

12 The victorious cause pleased the gods, but the vanquished, Cato. — Llcan, 
Pharsalia, I. 128, 



SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLD EX GROVE. 159 

the way of the cross. " If we be planted into the likeness of his 
death, we shall be also of his resurrection ; " else on no terms. 
Christ took away sin from us„ but he left us our share of suf- 
ferings ; and the cross, which was first printed upon us, in the 
waters of baptism, must for ever be born by us in penance, in 
mortification, in self-denial, and in martyrdom, and toleration, 
according as God shall require of us by the changes of the world, 
and the condition of the church. 

For Christ considers nothing but souls, he values not their 
estates or bodies, supplying our want by his providence ; and we 
are secured that our bodies may be killed, but cannot perish, so 
long as we preserve our duty and our consciences. 

Christ, our captain, hangs naked upon the cross ; our fellow- 
soldiers are cast into prison, torn with lions, rent in sunder with trees 
returning from their violent bendings, broken upon wheels, roasted 
upon gridirons, and have had the honour not only to have a good 
cause, but also to suffer for it ; and by faith, not by armies, — by 
patience, not by fighting, have overcome the world. " Et sit anima 
viea cum Christian is ; " "I pray God my soul may be among the 
Christians." And yet the Turks have prevailed upon a great part 
of the Christian world, and have made them slaves and tributaries, 
and do them all spite, and are hugely prosperous : but when 
Christians are so, then they are tempted and put in danger, and 
never have their duty and their interest so well secured, as when 
they lose all for Christ, and are adorned with wounds or poverty, 
change or scorn, affronts or revilings, which are obelisks and tri- 
umphs of a holy cause. Evil men and evil causes had need have 
good fortune and great success to support their persons and their 
pretences ; for nothing but innocence and Christianity can flourish 
in a persecution. I sum up this first discourse in a word : in all 
the Scripture, and in all the authentic stories of the church, we 
find it often that the devil appeared in the shape of an ' angel of 
light,' but was never suffered so much as to counterfeit a per- 
secuted sufferer. Say no more, therefore, as the murmuring 
Israelites said, ' If the Lord be with us, why have these evils appre- 



160 JEREMY TAYLOR. 

hended us ? ' for if to be afflicted be a sign that God hath forsaken 
a man, and refuses to own his religion or his question, then he that 
oppresses the widow, and murders the innocent, and puts the 
fatherless to death, and follows Providence by doing all the evils 
that he can, that is, all that God suffers him, he, I say, is the only 
saint and servant of God : and upon the same ground, the wolf 
and the fox may boast, when they scatter and devour a flock of 
lambs and harmless sheep. 



IX. 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

(1605-1682.) 

URN-BURIAL (HVDRIOTAPHIA). 

[Written about 1658.] 

Chapter IV. 

Christians have handsomely glossed the deformity of death by 
careful consideration of the body, and civil rites which take off 
brutal terminations : and though they conceived all reparable by a 
resurrection, cast not off all care of interment. And since the 
ashes of sacrifices burnt upon the altar of God were carefully 
carried out by the priests, and deposed in a clean field ; since they 
acknowledged their bodies to be the lodging of Christ, and tem- 
ples of the Holy Ghost, they devolved not all upon the sufficiency 
of soul- existence ; and therefore with long services and full 
solemnities, concluded their last exequies, wherein to all distinc- 
tions the Greek devotion seems most pathetically ceremonious. 

Christian invention hath chiefly driven at rites, which speak 
hopes of another life, and hints of a resurrection. And if the 
ancient Gentiles held not the immortality of their better part, and 
some subsistence after death, in several rites, customs, actions, and 
expressions, they contradicted their own opinions : wherein De- 
mocritus went high, even to the thought of a resurrection, as 
scofTIngly recorded by Pliny. What can be more express than the 
expression of Phocylides? Or who would expect from Lucretius 
a sentence of Ecclesiastes? Before Plato could speak, the soul 
had wings in Homer, which fell not, but flew out of the body into 
the mansions of the dead ; who also observed that handsome dis- 

161 



162 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

tinction of Demas l and Soma, 2 for the body conjoined to the soul, 
and body separated from it. Lucian spoke much truth in jest, 
when he said that part of Hercules which proceeded from Alc- 
mena perished, that from Jupiter remained immortal. Thus Socrates 
was content that his friends should bury his body, so they would 
not think they buried Socrates ; and, regarding only his immortal 
part, was indifferent to be burnt or buried. From such considera- 
tions, Diogenes might contemn sepulture, and, being satisfied that 
the soul could not perish, grow careless of corporal interment. 
The Stoicks, who thought the souls of wise men had their habita- 
tion about the moon, might make slight account of subterraneous 
deposition ; whereas the Pythagoreans and transcorporating phi- 
losophers, 3 who were to be often buried, held great care of their 
interment. And the Platonicks rejected not a due care of the 
grave, though they put their ashes to unreasonable expectations, in 
their tedious term of return and long set revolution. 

Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, 
wherein stones and clouts make martyrs ; and since the religion of 
one seems madness unto another, to afford an account or rational 
of old rites requires no rigid reader. That they kindled the pyre 
aversely, or turning their face from it, was an handsome symbol of 
unwilling ministration. That they washed their bones with wine 
and milk ; that the mother wrapped them in linen, and dried them 
in her bosom, the first fostering part and place of their nourish- 
ment ; that they opened their eyes towards heaven before they 
kindled the fire, as the place of their hopes or original, were no 
improper ceremonies. Their last valediction, thrice uttered by 
the attendants, was also very solemn, and somewhat answered by 
Christians, who thought it too little, if they threw not the earth 
thrice upon the interred body. That, in strewing their tombs, the 
Romans affected the rose ; the Greeks, amaranthus and myrtle : 
that the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, 4 yew, 

1 living body. 2 corpse. 

3 Those who held the doctrine of the transmigration uf souls. 

4 larch. 



URN-BURIAL {HYDR/OTAPH/A). 163. 

and trees perpetually verdant, lay silent expressions of their 
surviving hopes. Wherein Christians, who deck their coffins with 
bays, have found a more elegant emblem, for that it, seeming 
dead, will restore itself from the root, and its dry and exsuccous 5 
leaves resume their verdure again ; which, if we mistake not, we 
have also observed in furze. Whether the planting of yew in 
churchyards hold not its original from ancient funeral rites, or as 
an emblem of resurrection, from its perpetual verdure, may also 
admit conjecture. 

They made use of music to excite or quiet the affections of their 
friends, according to different harmonies. But the secret and 
symbolical hint was the harmonical nature of the soul ; which, 
delivered from the body, went again to enjoy the primitive har- 
mony of heaven, from whence it first descended ; which, according 
to its progress traced by antiquity, came down by Cancer, and 
ascended by Capricornus. 

They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as appre- 
hending their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their 
gristly bones would scarce leave separable relics after the pyral 
combustion. That they kindled not fire in their houses for some 
days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting fire. And 
mourning without hope, they had an happy fraud against excessive 
lamentation, by a common opinion that deep sorrows disturb their 
ghosts. 

That they buried their dead on their backs, or in a supine 
position, seems agreeable unto profound sleep, and common 
posture of dying, contrary to the most natural way of birth ; nor 
unlike our pendulous posture, in the doubtful state of the womb. 
Diogenes was singular, who preferred a prone situation in the 
grave ; and some Christians like neither, who decline the figure of 
rest, and make choice of an erect posture. 

That they carried them out of the world with their feet forward, 6 
not inconsonant unto reason, as contrary unto the native posture 

5 sapless. 6 [was.] 



164 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

of man, and his production first into it ; and also agreeable unto 
their opinions, while they bid adieu unto the world, not to look 
again upon it; whereas Mahometans who think to return to a 
delightful life again, are carried forth with their heads forward, and 
looking toward their houses. 

They closed their eyes, as parts which first die, or first discover 
the sad effects of death. But their iterated clamations to excitate 
their dying or dead friends, or revoke them unto life again, was a 
vanity of affection, as not presumably ignorant of the critical tests 
of death, by apposition of feathers, glasses, and reflection of 
figures, which dead eyes represent not : which, however not 
strictly verifiable in fresh and warm cadavers, could hardly elude 
the test in corpses of four or five days. 

That they sucked in the last breath of their expiring friends, 
was surely a practice of no medical institution, but a loose opinion 
that the soul passed out that way, and a fondness of affection, 
from some Pythagorical foundation that the spirit of one body 
passed into another, which they wished might be their own. 

That they poured oil upon the pyre, was a tolerable practice, 
while the intention rested in facilitating the accension. But to 
place good omens in the quick and speedy burning, to sacrifice 
unto the winds for a dispatch in this office, was a low form of 
superstition. 

The archimime, or jester, attending the funeral train, and imi- 
tating the speeches, gestures, and manners of the deceased, was 
too light for such solemnities, contradicting their funeral orations 
and doleful rites of the grave. 

That they buried a piece of money with them as a fee of the 
Elysian ferryman, was a practice full of folly. But the ancient 
custom of placing coins in considerable urns, and the present 
practice of burying medals in the noble foundations of Europe, 
are laudable ways of historical discoveries, in actions, persons, 
chronologies ; and posterity will applaud them. 

We examine not the old laws of sepulture, exempting certain 
persons from burial or burning. But hereby we apprehend that 



URN-BURIAL {HYDRIOTAPHIA). 165 

these were not the bones of persons planet-struck or burnt with 
fire from heaven ; no relicks of traitors to their country, self-killers, 
or sacrilegious malefactors ; persons in old apprehension unworthy 
of the earth ; condemned unto the Tartarus of hell, and bottomless 
pit of Pluto, from whence there was no redemption. 

Nor were only many customs questionable in order to their 
obsequies, but also sundry practices, fictions, and conceptions, 
discordant or obscure, of their state and future beings. Whether 
unto eight or ten bodies of men to add one of a woman, as being 
more inflammable and unctuously constituted for the better pyral 
combustion, were any rational practice ; or whether the complaint 
of Periander's wife be tolerable, that wanting her funeral burning, 
she suffered intolerable cold in hell, according to the constitution 
of the infernal house of Pluto, wherein cold makes a great part of 
their tortures ; it cannot pass without some question. 

Why the female ghosts appear unto Ulysses, before the heroes 
and masculine spirits, — why the Psyche or soul of Tiresias 7 is of 
the masculine gender, who, being blind on earth, sees more than 
all the rest in hell ; why the funeral suppers consisted of eggs, 
beans, smallage, and lettuce, since the dead are made to eat 
asphodels about the Elysian meadows, — why, since there is no 
sacrifice acceptable, nor any propitiation for the covenant of the 
grave, men set up the deity of Morta, and fruitlessly adored 
divinities without ears, it cannot escape some doubt. 

The dead seem all alive in the human Hades of Homer, yet 
cannot well speak, prophesy, or know the living, except they drink 
blood, wherein is the life of man. And therefore the souls of 
Penelope's paramours, conducted by Mercury, chirped like bats, 
and those which followed Hercules, made a noise but like a flock 
of birds. 

The departed spirits know things past and to come ; yet are 
ignorant of things present. Agamemnon foretells what should 
happen unto Ulysses, yet ignorantly inquires what is become of 

7 Homer, Odyssey, XL 90, 91. 



166 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

his own son. The ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer ; yet 
Sibylla tells /Eneas in Virgil, the thin habit of spirits was beyond 
the force of weapons. The spirits put off their malice with their 
bodies, and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latin hell : yet Ajax, in 
Homer, endures not a conference with Ulysses : and Deiphobus 
appears all mangled in Virgil's ghosts, yet we meet with perfect 
shadows among the wounded ghosts of Homer. 

Since Charon in Lucian applauds his condition among the dead, 
whether it be handsomely said of Achilles, that living contemner 
of death, that he had rather be a ploughman's servant than em- 
peror of the dead? How Hercules his soul is in hell, and yet 
in heaven ; and Julius his soul in a star, yet seen by /Eneas in 
hell ? — except the ghosts were but images and shadows of the 
soul, received in higher mansions, according to the ancient divis- 
ion of body, soul, and image, or simulachrum, of them both. The 
particulars of future beings must needs be dark unto ancient 
theories, which Christian philosophy yet determines but in a 
cloud of opinions. A dialogue between two infants in the womb 
concerning the state of this world, 3 might handsomely illustrate 
our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse 
in Plato's den, and are but embryo philosophers. 

Pythagoras escapes in the fabulous hell of Dante, among that 
swarm of philosophers, wherein, whilst we meet with Plato and 
Socrates, Cato is to be found in no lower place than purgatory. 
Among all the set, Epicurus is most considerable, whom men 
make honest without an Elysium, who contemned life without 
encouragement of immortality, and making nothing after death, 
yet made nothing of the king of terrors. 

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended 
as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live ; and unto 
such as consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to 
die, which makes us amazed at those audacities that durst be 

8 Wilkin states that Sir Thomas Browne " actually did write such a dia- 
logue," but he had searched in vain for it. 



URN-BURIAL (HYDRIOTAPHIA). 167 

nothing and return into their chaos again. Certainly such spirits 
as could contemn death, when they expected no better being 
after, would have scorned to live, had they known any. And 
therefore we applaud not the judgment of Machiavel, that Chris- 
tianity makes men cowards, or that with the confidence of but 
half-dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility have 
abased the spirits of men, which Pagan principles exalted ; but 
rather regulated the wildness of audacities, in the attempts, 
grounds, and eternal sequels of death ; wherein men of the boldest 
spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. 9 Nor can we extenuate 
the valor of ancient martrys, who contemned death in the uncom- 
fortable scene of their lives, and in their decrepit martyrdoms did 
probably lose not many months of their days, or parted with life 
when it was scarce worth the living. For (beside that long time 
past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come) they 
had no small disadvantage from the constitution of old age, which 
naturally makes men fearful, and complexionally superannuated 
from the bold and courageous thoughts of youth and fervent 
years. But the contempt of death from corporal animosity 10 pro- 
moteth not our felicity. They may sit in the orchestra, and 
noblest seats of heaven, who have held up shaking hands in the 
fire, and humanly contended for glory. 

Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet 
with tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities. 
But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, 
or erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers 
of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so 
low as not to rise against Christians, who believing or knowing 
that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practice and conversa- 
tion — were a query too sad to insist on. 

But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future 
being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted 
conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh 

9 rash. 10 physical courage. 



168 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

at. Happy are they which live not in that disadvantage of time, 
when men could say little for futurity, but from reason : whereby 
the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy 
dissolutions. With these hopes, Socrates warmed his doubtful 
spirits against that cold potion ; and Cato, before he durst give 
the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the Immortality 
of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity 
of that attempt. 

It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to 
tell him he is at the end of his nature ; or that there is no further 
state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise 
made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural expec- 
tation and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature ; 
unsatisfied considerators would quarrel the justice of their consti- 
tutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower ; whereby, by 
knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of themselves, 
they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior creatures, who 
in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having not the 
apprehension to deplore their own natures, and, being framed 
below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of better 
being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment : 
but the superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, 
whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will 
be able at last to tell us, we are more than our present selves, and 
evacuate 11 such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplish- 
ments. 

Chapter V. 

Now since these dead bones have already out-lasted the living 
ones of Methuselah, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls 
of clay, out-worn all the strong and specious buildings above it ; 
and quietly rested under the drums and trampling of three 

11 make void. 



URN- BURIAL (HYDRIOTAPHIA). 169 

conquests : what prince can promise such diuturnity I2 unto his 
relics, or might not gladly say, 

Sic ego componl versus in ossa velini? 13 

Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust 
of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments. 

In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, 
when to be unknown was the means of their continuation, and 
obscurity their protection. If they died by violent hands, and 
were thrust into their urns, these bones become considerable, and 
some old philosophers would honor them, whose souls they con- 
ceived most pure, which were thus snatched from their bodies, 
and to retain a stronger propension unto them ; whereas they 
weariedly left a languishing corpse, and with faint desires of re- 
union. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the 
bundle of time, they fall into indistinction, and make but one blot 
with infants. If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but 
a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition ; we live with 
death, and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the 
life of Methuselah, were work for Archimedes : common counters 
sum up the life of Moses his man. Our days become considerable, 
like petty sums, by minute accumulations ; where numerous 
fractions make up but small round numbers ; and our days of a 
span long, make not one little finger. 

If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity 
into it, there were a happiness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in 
half-senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying ; 
when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David 
grew politickly cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the 
wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date 
of age. Adversity stretcheth our days, misery makes Alcmena's 

12 long existence. 

13 Thus I should wish verses to be composed on my bones. — Tibullus, III. 
2, 26 



170 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

nights, 14 and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious 
being is that which can unwish itself, content to be nothing, or 
never to have been, which was beyond the malcontent of Job, 
who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity ; content to 
have so far been, as to have a title to future being, although he 
had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an 
abortion. 

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed 
when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, 15 
are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these 
ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with 
princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who 
were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes 
made up, were a question above antiquarism ; not to be resolved 
by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the pro- 
vincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as 
good provision for their names, as they have done for their relics, 
they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to 
subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in 
duration. Vain ashes which in the oblivion of names, persons, 
times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless contin- 
uation, and only rise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal 
vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. 
Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last forever, had 
encouragement for ambition; and, rinding no atropos™ unto the 
immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity 
of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in 
the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before 
the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great 
accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have 
already out-lasted their monuments, and mechanical preservations. 

14 " One night as long as three." — Wilkin. 

15 "The puzzling questions of Tiberius unto grammarians. Marcel. Dona- 
tus in Suet."" — Wilkin. 

16 One of the Fates, whose office was to cut the thread of life. 



URN-BURIAL (IlV/)RlOTAPIIIA). 171 

But in this latter scene of time, we cannot expect such mummies 
unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of 
Elias, and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live within two 
Methuselahs of Hector. 

And therefore, restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our 
memories unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out 
of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to 
live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons. 
One face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. Tis too 
late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are 
acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our 
memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and 
whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations 
in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. 
We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, 
are providentially taken off from such imaginations ; and, being 
necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity are natu- 
rally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot 
excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh 
pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment. 

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal 
right-lined circle, 17 must conclude and shut up all. There is no 
antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth 
all things : our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and 
sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones 
tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees 
stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare 
inscriptions like many in Gruter, 18 to hope for eternity by enigmat- 
ical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by anti- 
quaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of 
the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpe- 
tuity, even by everlasting languages. 

17 "The character of death."— Wilkin. 

18 Gruter's " Ancient Inscriptions." 



172 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

To be content that times to come should only know there was 
such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a 
frigid ambition in Cardan ; disparaging his horoscopal inclination 
and judgment of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's 
patients, or Achilles's horses in Homer, under naked nominations, 
without deserts and noble acts, which are the balsam of our 
memories, the entelechia™ and soul of our subsistences ? To be 
nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history. The 
Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than 
Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the 
good thief than Pilate ? 

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and 
deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of 
perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? 
Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost 
lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, 
confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by 
the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations, 
and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows 
whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more 
remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the 
known account of time? Without the favor of the everlasting 
register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and 
Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle. 

Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content 
to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of 
God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up 
the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since 
contain not one living century. The number of the dead long 
exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth 
the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour 
adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one 

19 A word used by Aristotle of the soul as the entelechia of the body, that 
by which the body actually exists. 



URN-BURIAL (HYDRIOTAPHIA). 173 

moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even 
Pagans could doubt, whether thus to live were to die ; since our 
longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, 
and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, 
and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death L, ° daily 
haunts us with dying mementos, and time that grows old in itself, 
bids us hope no long duration ; — diuturnity is a dream and folly 
of expectation. 

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion 
shares with memory a great part even of our living beings ; we 
slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of afflic- 
tion leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extrem- 
ities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones 
are fables. Afflictions induce callosities ; miseries are slippery, 
or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy 
stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils 
past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the 
mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not 
relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept 
raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity con- 
tented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their 
souls, — a good way to continue their memories, while having the 
advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something 
remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of 
their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last 
durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable 
night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, 
and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was 
no more than to return into their unknown and divine original 
again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their 
bodies in sweet consistencies, to attend the return of their souls. 

20 Sleep, often so called in Elizabethan poetry. Cf. Daniel's Sonnet, LI. : — 

" Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, 
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born." 



174 S/A THOMAS BROWNE. 

But all was vanity, feeding the mind, and folly. The Egyptian 
mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now con- 
sumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, 
and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. 

In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from 
oblivion, in preservations below the moon ; men have been 
deceived even in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied con- 
ceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmog- 
raphy of that part hath already varied the names of contrived con- 
stellations ; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-star. 
While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are 
but like the earth ; — durable in their main bodies, alterable in 
their parts, whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives 
begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with 
Phaeton's favor, would make clear conviction. 

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever 
hath no beginning, may be confident of no end ; — which is the 
peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself; — and 
the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted 
as not to suffer even from the power of itself : all others have a 
dependent being and within the reach of destruction. But the 
sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, 
and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of 
posthumous memory. God who can only destroy our souls, and 
hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names 
hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of 
chance that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustra- 
tions ; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in obliv- 
ion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous 
in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, 
nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature. 

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. 
A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after 
death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn 
like Sardanapalus ; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly 



URN-BURIAL (HYDRiOTAPHIA). 175 

of prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of solxr 
obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, 
pitch, a mourner, and an urn. 

Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus. 2l The 
man of God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invis- 
ibly interred by angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not 
without some marks directing human discovery. Enoch and 
Elias, without either tomb or burial, in an anomalous state of being, 
are the great examples of perpetuity, in their long and living mem- 
ory, in strict account being still on this side death, and having a 
late part yet to act upon this^stage of earth. If in the decretory 
term of the world we shall not all die but be changed, according 
to received translation, the last day will make but few graves ; 
at least quick resurrections will anticipate lasting sepultures. 
Some graves will be opened before they be quite closed, and 
Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared to die, shall 
groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second 
and living death, when life puts despair on the damned ; when 
men shall wish the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and 
annihilations shall be courted. 

While some have studied monuments, others have studiously 
declined them, and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they 
durst not acknowledge their graves ; wherein Alaricus seems most 
subtle, who had a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. 
Even Sylla, that thought himself safe in his urn, could not prevent 
revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his monument. Happy 
are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men 
in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them in the next ; 
who, when they die, make no commotion among the dead, and 
are not touched with that poetical taint of Isaiah. " 

Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain- 
glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most 

21 "In Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Egyptian, Arabic: defaced by Licinius the 
emperor." — Wilkin. 

22 Isaiah xiv. 1 6. 



176 SIR THOMAS BROWKK. 

magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which 
trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly 
pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must 
diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of con- 
tingency. 23 

Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made 
little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while 
they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of 
their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to 
understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, 24 liquefac- 
tion, transformation, the kiss of the, spouse, gustation ^ of God, 
and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an 
handsome anticipation of heaven j the glory of the world is surely 
over, and the earth in ashes unto them. 

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to 
exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satis- 
faction unto old expectations, and made one part of their 
Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true 
belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not 
only an hope, but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie 
in St. Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready 
to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with 
six foot as the moles of Adrianus. 26 

tabesne cadavera solvat 
An rogus, hand refer t. Tl 

23 the least of angles. 24 dissolution. 25 tasting, or enjoyment. 

26 The Mausoleum of Hadrian at Rome, the modern Castle of St. Angelo. 

27 Whether corruption or the funeral pyre destroys corpses, makes no 
difference. — LUCAN, Pharsalia, VII. 809-10. 



X. 

ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

(i 618-1667.) 

1. A DISCOURSE, BY WAY OF VISION, CONCERNING 
THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL} 

[Written about 1660.] 

It was the funeral day of the late man who made himself to be 
called protector. And though I bore but little affection, either to 
the memory of him, or to the trouble and folly of all public pag- 
eantry, yet I was forced by the importunity of my company to go 
along with them, and be a spectator of that solemnity, the expecta- 
tion of which had been so great that it was said to have brought 
some very curious persons (and no doubt singular virtuosos) as far 
as from the Mount in Cornwall, and from the Orcades. I found 
there had been much more cost bestowed than either the dead 
man, or indeed death itself, could deserve. There was a mighty 
train of black assistants, among which, too, divers princes in the 
persons of their ambassadors (being infinitely afflicted for the loss 
of their brother) were pleased to attend ; the hearse was magnifi- 
cent, the idol crowned, and (not to mention all other ceremonies 
which are practised at royal interments, and therefore by no 
means could be omitted here) the vast multitude of spectators 
made up, as it uses to do, no small part of the spectacle itself. 
But yet, I know not how, the whole was so managed, that, me- 
thought, it somewhat represented the life of hi^n for whom it was 
made ; much noise, much tumult, much expense, much magnifi- 
cence, much vain-glory ; briefly, a great show, and yet, after all 
this, but an ill sight. At last (for it seemed long to me, and, like 

1 HURD calls this " the best of our author's prose works." 

177 



i78 ABRAHAM COW LEY. 

his short reign too, very tedious) the whole scene passed by ; and 
I retired back to my chamber, weary, and I think more melan- 
choly than any of the mourners ; where I began to reflect on the 
whole life of this prodigious man : and sometimes I was filled with 
horror and detestation of his actions, and sometimes I inclined a 
little to reverence and admiration of his courage, conduct, and 
success ; till, by these different motions and agitations of mind, 
rocked, as it were asleep, I fell at last into this vision ; or if you 
please to call it but a dream, I shall not take it ill, because the 
father of poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God. 

But sure it was no dream ; for I was suddenly transported afar 
off (whether in the body, or out of the body, like St. Paul, I know 
not) and found myself on the top of that famous hill in the island 
Mona, which has the prospect of three great, and not-long-since 
most happy, kingdoms. As soon as ever I looked on them, the 
not-long-since struck upon my memory, and called forth the sad 
representation of all the sins, and all the miseries, that had over- 
whelmed them these twenty years. And I wept bitterly for two 
or three hours ; and, when my present stock of moisture was all 
wasted, I fell a sighing for an hour or more ; and, as soon as I 
recovered from my passion the use of speech and reason, I broke 
forth, as I remember (looking upon England) into this complaint : - 
****** 

I think I should have gone on, but that I was interrupted by a 
strange and terrible apparition ; for there appeared to me (arising 
out of the earth as I conceived) the figure of a man, taller than a 
giant, or indeed than the shadow of any giant in the evening. 
His body was naked ; but that nakedness adorned, or rather 
deformed all over, with several figures, after the manner of the 
antient Britons, painted upon it : and I perceived that most of 
them were the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, 
and (if I be not much mistaken) it was the battle of Naseby that 
was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass ; 

- Here follow eight stanzas of poetry. 



THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 179 

and there were three crowns of the same metal (as I guessed) 
and that looked as red-hot too, upon his head. He held in his 
right hand a sword, that was yet bloody, and nevertheless the 
motto of it was, Pax qutcritur bello ; :i and in his left hand a thick 
book, upon the back of which was written in letters of gold, Acts, 
Ordinances, Protestations, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, 
Remonstrances, &c. 

Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object might have 
quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so it pleased God (for 
there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision) that I was not at all 
daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly, "What art thou?" 
And he said, " I am called the north-west principality, his high- 
ness, the protector of the common-wealth of England, Scotland, 
and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereunto ; for I am 
that angel, to whom the Almighty has committed the government 
of those three kingdoms, which thou seest from this place." And 
I answered and said, " If it be so, Sir, it seems to me that for 
almost these twenty years past, your highness has been absent from 
your charge : for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest 
man had since that time been our governor, we should not have 
wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of 
confusion, but either not have entered at all into them, or at least 
have returned back ere we had absolutely lost our way ; but, instead 
of your highness, we have had since such a protector, as was his 
predecessor Richard the third to the king his nephew; for he 
presently slew the commonwealth, which he pretended to protect, 
and set up himself in the place of it ; a little less guilty indeed in 
one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did 
but murder a murderer. Such a protector we have had, as we would 
have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received 
a constant Turk, than this every month's apostate ; such a pro- 
tector, as man is to his flocks, which he sheers, and sells, or 
devours himself, and I would fain know what the wolf, which he 

3 Peace is sought through iuar. 



ISO ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

protects him from, could do more. Such a protector — " and as I 
was proceeding, me-thoughts, 4 his highness began to put on a dis- 
pleased and threatening countenance, as men use to do when their 
dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company ; which 
gave me the first rise of jealousy against him, for I did not believe 
that Cromwell among all his foreign correspondences had ever held 
any with angels. However I was not hardened enough yet to ven- 
ture a quarrel with him then ; and therefore (as if I had spoken to 
the protector himself in Whitehall) I desired him " that his high- 
ness would please to pardon me, if I had unwittingly spoken any- 
thing to the disparagement of a person, whose relations to his 
highness I had not the honour to know." 

At which he told me " that he had no other concernment for his 
late highness, than as he took him to be the greatest man that 
ever was of the English nation, if not (said he) of the whole world ; 
which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I 
now account myself, as it were, a naturalized English angel, by 
having had so long the management of the affairs of that country. 
And pray, countryman, (said he, very kindly and very flatteringly) 
for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, 
that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue, What can be 
more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no for- 
tune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, 
or of mind, which have often raised men to the highest 
dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness 
to succeed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one 
of the most antient, and most solidly founded monarchies upon 
the earth ? that he should have the power or boldness to put his 
prince and master to an open and infamous death ; to banish that 
numerous and strongly-allied family ; to do all this under the name 
and wages of a parliament ; to trample upon them too as he 
pleased, and spurn them out of doors, when he grew weary of 
them ; to raise up a new and unheard of monster out of their 

4 So Hurd's text, but the form is incorrect. 



THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 181 

ashes ; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above 
all things that ever were called sovereign in England ; to oppress 
all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice ; 
to serve all parties patiently for awhile, and to command them 
victoriously at last ; to over-run each corner of the three nations, 
and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and 
the poverty of the north ; to be feared and courted by all foreign 
princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth ; to call 
together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them 
again with the breath of his mouth ; to be humbly and daily peti- 
tioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions 
a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be 
their servant ; to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as 
much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and 
to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them ; and lastly (for 
there is no end of all particulars of his glory) to bequeath all this 
with one word to his posterity ; to die with peace at home, and 
triumph abroad ; to be buried among kings, and with more i'lan 
regal solemnity ; and to leave a name behind him, not to be ex- 
tinguished, but with the whole world ; which, as it is now too little 
for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if the 
short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the 
extent of his immortal designs?" 

By this speech, I began to understand perfectly well what kind 
of angel his pretended highness was ; and having fortified myself 
privately with a short mental prayer, and with the sign of the 
cross (not out of any superstition to the sign, but as a recognition 
of my baptism in Christ), I grew a little bolder, and replied in 
this manner : " I should not venture to oppose what you are 
pleased to say in commendation of the late great, and (I confess) 
extraordinary person, but that I remember Christ forbids us to 
assent to any other doctrine but what himself has taught us, even 
though it should be delivered by an angel ; and if such you be, 
Sir, it may be you have spoken all this rather to try than to tempt 
my frailty : for sure I am, that we must renounce or forget all the 



182 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

laws of the New and Old Testament, and those which are the 
foundation of both, even the laws of moral and natural honesty, if 
we approve of the action of that man whom I suppose you com- 
mend by Irony. 

There would be no end to instance in the particulars of all his 
wickedness ; but to sum up a part of it briefly : What can be 
more extraordinarily wicked than for a person, such as yourself 
qualify him rightly, to endeavour not only to exalt himself above, 
but to trample upon, all his equals and betters? to pretend free- 
dom for all men, and under the help of that pretense to make all 
men his servants? to take arms against taxes of scarce two hun- 
dred thousand pounds a year, and to raise them himself to above 
two millions ? to quarrel for the loss of three or four ears, and to 
strike off three or four hundred heads ? to fight against an imag- 
inary suspicion of I know not what? two thousand guards to be 
fetched for the king, I know not from whence, and to keep up for 
himself no less than forty thousand ? to pretend the defence of 
parliaments, and violently to dissolve all even of his own calling, 
and almost choosing ? to undertake the reformation of religion, to 
rob it even to the very skin, and then to expose it naked to the 
rage of all sects and heresies ? to set up counsels of rapine, and 
courts of murder ? to fight against the king under a commission 
for him j to take him forcibly out of the hands of those for whom 
he had conquered him ; to draw him into his net with protes- 
tations and vows of fidelity ; and when he had caught him in it, to 
butcher him with as little shame as conscience or humanity, in 
the open face of the whole world ? to receive a commission for the 
king and parliament, to murder (as I said) the one, and destroy 
no less impudently the other ? to fight against monarchy when he 
declared for it, and declare against it when he contrived for it in 
his own person? to abase perfidiously and supplant ingratefully his 
own general 5 first, and afterwards most of those officers, who, with 
the loss of their honour and hazard of their souls, had lifted him 

5 Fairfax. 



THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER C ROM WELT 183 

up to the top of his unreasonable ambitions ? to break his faith 
with all enemies and with all friends equally ? and to make no less 
frequent use of the most solemn perjuries, than the looser sort of 
people do of customary oaths ? to usurp three kingdoms without 
any shadow of the least pretensions, and to govern them as unjustly 
as he got them ? to set himself up as an idol (which we know, as 
St. Paul says, in itself is nothing), and make the very streets of 
London like the valley of Hinnon, by burning the bowels of men 
as a sacrifice to his molochship? to seek to entail this usurpa- 
tion upon his posterity, and with it an endless war upon the 
nation? and lastly, by the severest judgment of Almighty God, to 
die hardened, and mad, and unrepentant, with the curses of the 
present age, and the detestation of all to succeed?" 

Though I had much more to say (for the life of man is so short, 
that it allows not time enough to speak against a tyrant) ; yet, be- 
cause I had a mind to hear how my strange adversary would behave 
himself upon this subject, and to give even the devil (as they say) 
his right and fair play in a disputation, I stopped here, and expected, 
not without the frailty of a little fear, that he should have broke into 
a violent passion in behalf of his favourite : but he on the contrary 
very calmly, and with the dove-like innocency of a serpent that was 
not yet warmed enough to sting, thus replied to me : 

" It is not so much out of my affection to that person whom we 
discourse of (whose greatness is too solid to be shaken by the 
breath of an oratory), as for your own sake (honest countryman), 
whom I conceive to err rather by mistake than out of malice, that 
I shall endeavour to reform your uncharitable and unjust opinion. 
And, in the first place, I must needs put you in mind of a sentence 
of the most antient of the heathen divines, that you men are 
acquainted withal, 

Ov\ oaiav [60-177] KTajxivoKTtv C7r' av&pdviv ev)(€Taa<rua.L } 



Tis wicked with insulting feet to tread 
Upon the monuments of the dead. 

6 Homer, Odyssey, XXII. 412. 



184 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

And the intention of the reproof there is no less proper for this 
subject ; for it was spoken to a person who was proud and inso- 
lent against those dead men, to whom he had been humble and 
obedient whilst they lived." 

"Your highness may please (said I) to add the verse that fol- 
lows, as no less proper for this subject : 

Whom God's just doom and their own sins have sent 
Already to their punishment. 

But I take this to be the rule in the case, that, when we fix any 
infamy upon deceased persons, it should not be done out of hatred 
to the dead, but out of love and charity to the living : that the 
curses, which only remain in men's thoughts, and dare not come 
forth against tyrants (because they are tyrants) whilst they are so, 
may at least be for ever settled and engraven upon their mem- 
ories, to deter all others from the like wickedness ; which else, in 
the time of their foolish prosperity, the flattery of their own hearts, 
and of other men's .tongues, would not suffer them to perceive. 
Ambition is so subtile a tempter, and the corruption of human 
nature so susceptible of the temptation, that a man can hardly 
resist it, be he never so much forewarned of the evil consequences ; 
much less if he find riot only the concurrence of the present, but 
the approbation too of following ages, which have the liberty to 
judge more freely. The mischief of tyranny is too great, even in 
the shortest time that it can continue ; it is endless and insupporta- 
ble, if the example be to reign too \ and if a Lambert must be invited 
to follow the steps of a Cromwell, as well by the voice of honour, 
as by the sight of power and riches. Though it may seem to some 
fantastically, yet was it wisely done of the Syracusans, to implead 
with the forms of their ordinary justice, to condemn and destroy 
even the statues of all their tyrants : if it were possible to cut them 
out of all history, and to extinguish their very names, I am of 
opinion that it ought to be done ; but, since they have left behind 
them too deep wounds to be ever closed up without a scar, at 
least let us set such a mark upon their memory that men of 



THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 185 

the same wicked inclinations may be no less affrighted with their 
lasting ignominy than enticed by their momentary glories. And 
that your highness may perceive that I speak not all this out of 
any private animosity against the person of the late protector, I 
assure you, upon my faith, that I bear no more hatred to his 
name than I do to that of Marius or Sylla, who never did me, or 
any friend of mine, the least injury;" and with that, transported 
by a holy fury, I fell into this sudden rapture : 7 

* * * * * * 

Here, the spirit of verse beginning a little to fail, I stopt : and 
his highness, smiling, said, " I was glad to see you engaged in the 
enclosure of metre ; for, if you had staid in the open plain of dis- 
claiming against the word tyrant, I must have had patience for 
half a dozen hours, till you had tired yourself as well as me. But 
pray, countryman, to avoid this sciomachy, 8 or imaginary combat 
with words, let me know, Sir, what you mean by the name of 
tyrant, for I remember that, among your ancient authors, not only 
all kings, but even Jupiter himself (your juvans pater'*) is so 
termed ; and perhaps, as it was used formerly, in a good sense, 
so we shall find it, upon better consideration, to be still a good 
thing for the benefit and peace of mankind ; at least, it will appear 
whether your interpretation of it may be justly applied to the 
person, who is now the subject of our discourse." 

" I call him (said I) a tyrant, who either intrudes himself forci- 
bly into the government of his fellow-citizens without any legal 
authority over them \ or who, having a just title to the govern- 
ment of a people, abuses it to the destruction, or tormenting of 
them. So that all tyrants are at the same time usurpers, either of 
the whole, or at least of a part, of that power which they assume 
to themselves ; and no less are they to be accounted rebels, since 
no man can usurp authority over others, but by rebelling against 

7 Here follow eight stanzas of poetry. 

8 fighting with a shadow. 

9 helping father. 



186 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

them who had it before, or at least against those laws which were 
his superiors : and in all these senses no history can afford us a 
more evident example of tyranny, or more out of all possibility of 
excuse, or palliation, than that of the person whom you are pleased 
to defend ; whether we consider his reiterated rebellions against 
all his superiors, or his usurpation of the supreme power to him- 
self, or his tyranny in the exercise of it : and, if lawful princes 
have been esteemed tyrants by not containing themselves within 
the bounds of those laws which have been left them, as the sphere 
of their authority, by their forefathers, what shall we say of 
that man, who, having by right no power at all in this nation, 
could not content himself with that which had satisfied the 
most ambitious of our princes? nay, not with those vastly ex- 
tended limits of sovereignty, which he (disdaining all that had 
been prescribed and observed before) was pleased (out of great 
modesty) to set to himself; not abstaining from rebellion and 
usurpation even against his own laws, as well as those of the 
nation ? " 

" Hold, friend, (said his highness, pulling me by my arm) for I 
see your zeal is transporting you again ; whether the protector 
were a tyrant in the exorbitant exercise of his power, we shall see 
anon ; it is requisite to examine, first, whether he were so in the 
usurpation of it. And I say, that not only he, but no man else, 
ever was, or can be so ; and that for these reasons. First, because 
all power belongs only to God, who is the source and fountain of 
it, as kings are of all honours in their dominions. Princes are 
but his viceroys in the little provinces of this world ; and to some 
he gives their places for a few years, to some for their lives, and 
to others (upon ends or deserts best known to himself, or merely 
for his undisputable good pleasure) he bestows, as it were, leases 
upon them and their posterity, for such a date of time as is pre- 
fixed in that patent of their destiny, which is not legible to you 
men below. Neither is it more unlawful for Oliver to succeed 
Charles in the kingdom of England, when God so disposes of it, 
than it had been for him to have succeeded the Lord Strafford in 



THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 187 

the lieutenancy of Ireland, if he had been appointed to it by the 
king then reigning. Men are in both the cases obliged to obey 
him whom they see actually invested with the authority by that 
sovereign from whom he ought to derive it, without disputing or 
examining the causes, either of the removal of the one, or the 
preferment of the other. Secondly, because all power is attained 
either by the election and consent of the people (and that takes 
away your objection of forcible intrusion) ; or else, by a conquest 
of them (and that gives such a legal authority as you mention to 
be wanting in the usurpation of a tyrant) ; so that either this title 
is right, and then there are no usurpers, or else it is a wrong one, 
and then there are none else but usurpers, if you examine the 
original pretences of the princes of the world. Thirdly, (which, 
quitting the dispute in general, is a particular justification of his 
highness,) the government of England was totally broken and dis- 
solved, and extinguished by the confusions of a civil war ; so that 
his highness could not be accused to have possessed himself 
violently of the antient building of the commonwealth, but to 
have prudently and peaceably built up a new one out of the ruins 
and ashes of the former ; and he who after a deplorable ship- 
wreck, can with extraordinary industry gather together the dis- 
persed and broken planks and pieces of it, and with no less 
wonderful art and felicity so rejoin them as to make a new vessel 
more tight and beautiful than the old one, deserves, no doubt, to 
have the command of her (even as his highness had) by the 
desire of the seamen and passengers themselves. And do but 
consider, lastly, (for I omit a multitude of weighty things, that 
might be spoken upon this noble argument) do but consider 
seriously and impartially with yourself, what admirable parts of 
wit and prudence, what indefatigable diligence and invincible 
courage, must of necessity have concurred in the person of that 
man who, from so contemptible beginnings (as I observed before), 
and through so many thousand difficulties, was able not only to 
make himself the greatest and most absolute monarch of this 
nation ; but to add to it the entire conquest of Ireland and Scot- 



1SS ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

land (which the whole force of the world joined with the Roman 
virtue could never attain to), and to crown all this with illustri- 
ous and heroical undertakings and successes upon all our foreign 
enemies : do but (I say again) consider this, and you will confess 
that his prodigious merits were a better title to imperial dignity 
than the blood of an hundred royal progenitors ; and will rather 
lament that he lived not to overcome more nations than envy him 
the conquest and dominion of these." 

" Whoever you are (said I, my indignation making me some- 
what bolder) your discourse (methinks) becomes as little the 
person of a tutelar angel, as Cromwell's actions did that of a 
protector. It is upon these principles that all the great crimes of 
the world have been committed, and most particularly those 
which I have had the misfortune to see in my own time, and in 
my own country. If these be to be allowed, we must break up 
human society, retire into woods, and equally there stand upon 
our guards against our brethren mankind, and our rebels the wild 
beasts. For, if there can be no usurpation upon the rights of a 
whole nation, there can be none most certainly upon those of a 
private person ; and, if the robbers of countreys be God's 
vicegerents, there is no doubt but the thieves and banditos, and 
murderers, are his under officers. It is true which you say, that 
God is the source and fountain of all power ; and it is no less 
true, that he is the creator of serpents, as well as angels ; nor does 
.his goodness fail of its ends, even in the malice of his own crea- 
tures. What power he suffers the devil to exercise in this world, 
is too apparent by our daily experience ; and by nothing more than 
the late monstrous iniquities which you dispute for, and patronize 
in England : but would you infer from thence that the power of 
the devil is a just and lawful one ; and that all men ought, as well 
as most do, obey him ? God is the fountain of all powers ; but 
some flow from the rich hand (as it were) of his goodness, and 
others from the left hand of his justice ; and the world, like an 
island between these two rivers, is sometimes refreshed and nour- 
ished by the one, and sometimes over-run and ruined by the 



THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 189 

other ; and (to continue a little farther the allegory) we are never 
overwhelmed with the latter, till either by our malice or negligence 
we have stopped and dammed up the former." 10 

10 Cowley continues at some length, refuting with vigor each separate argu- 
ment of the angel in behalf of Cromwell. The whole Vision is a beautiful 
example of simple, easy, and natural English prose of this time, and is a great 
contrast to the prose of Milton and Sir Thomas Browne. 



X. 

2. SEVERAL DISCOURSES, BY WAY OF ESSAYS, IN 
VERSE AND PROSE. 

[Written between 1660 and 1667.] 

Essay IX. — The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches. 

If you should see a man who were to cross from Dover to 
Calais, run about very busy and solicitous, and trouble himself 
many weeks before in making provisions for the voyage, would 
you commend him for a cautious and discreet person, or laugh at 
him for a timorous and impertinent coxcomb? A man who is 
excessive in his pains and diligence, and who consumes the 
greatest part of his time in furnishing the remainder with all con- 
veniences and even superfluities, is to angels and wise men no 
less ridiculous; he does as little consider the shortness of his 
passage that he might proportion his cares accordingly. It is, 
alas, so narrow a strait betwixt the womb and the grave, that it 
might be called the Pas de Vie, as well as the Pas de Calais. 
We are all i<f>rjfjxpoL t n as Pindar calls us, creatures of a day, and 
therefore our Saviour bounds our desires to that little space ; as 
if it were very probable that every day should be our last, we are 
taught to demand even bread for no longer a time. The sun 
ought not to set upon our covetousness, no more than upon our 
anger ; but as to God Almighty a thousand years are as one day, 
so, in direct opposition, one day to the covetous man is as a thou- 
sand years, tarn brevi fortis jaculatur czvo multa, 12 so far he shoots 
beyond his butt. One would think he were of the opinion of the 
Millenaries, and hoped for so long a reign upon earth. The 

11 for a day. 

12 in so short a life he bravely aims at many things. — Horace, Odes, II. 
16, 17. 

190 



DISCOURSES, BY WAY OF ESSAYS. 191 

patriarchs before the flood, who enjoyed almost such a life, made, 
we are sure, less stores for the maintaining of it ; they who lived 
nine hundred years scarcely provided for a few days ; we who live 
but a few days, provide at least for nine hundred years. What a 
strange alteration is this of human life and manners ! and yet we 
see an imitation of it in every man's particular experience, for we 
begin not the cares of life till it be half spent, and still increase 
them as that decreases. What is there among the actions of 
beasts so illogical and repugnant to reason ? When they do any- 
thing which seems to proceed from that which we call reason, we 
disdain to allow them that perfection, and attribute it only to a 
natural instinct. If we could but learn to number our days (as 
we are taught to pray that we might) we should adjust much 
better our other accounts, but whilst we never consider an end 
of them, it is no wonder if our cares for them be without end 
too. Horace advises very wisely, and in excellent good words, 
spatio brevi spent longam reseces ; 13 from a short life cut off all 
hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned away like suckers 
that choke the mother-plant, and hinder it from bearing fruit. 
And in another place to the same sense, Vita summa brevis spent 
nos vetat inchoare longam, 14 which Seneca does not mend when 
he says, O quanta deme?ttia est spes tongas inchoantium / 15 but he 
gives an example there of an acquaintance of his named Senecio, 
who from a very mean beginning by great industry in turning 
about of money through all ways of gain, had attained to extraor- 
dinary riches, but died on a sudden after having supped merrily, 
In ipso actu bene cedentiunt rerum, in ipso procurrentis fortuna 
[pecttni(z] wipe tit ; 1C in the full course of his good fortune, when 

13 Horace, Odes, I. u, 7. 

14 The short sum of life forbids our indulging long hopes. — Horace, Odes, 
I. 4, 15. 

15 Oh how great is the madness of those who indulge long hopes. — Seneca, 
Epistles, 1 01, 4. 

16 On the very point of success, at the very moment of advancing fortune. — 
Seneca, Epistles, 101, 4. 



192 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

she had a high tide and a stiff gale and all her sails on ; upon which 
occasion he cries, out of Virgil : 

Insert nunc, Melibcee, pyros, pone ordine vites : 17 

Go to, Melibseus, now, 

Go graff thy orchards and thy vineyards plant; 

Behold the fruit ! 

For this Senecio I have no compassion, because he was taken, 
as we say, in ipso facto, still labouring in the work of avarice ; but 
the poor rich man in St. Luke (whose case was not like this) I 
could pity, methinks, if the Scripture would permit me, for he 
seems to have been satisfied at last ; he confesses he had enough 
for many years ; he bids his soul take its ease ; and yet for all 
that, God says to him, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be 
required of thee, and the things thou hast laid up, whom shall 
they belong to?" Where shall we find the causes of this bitter 
reproach and terrible judgment ; we may find, I think, two, and 
God perhaps saw more. First, that he did not intend true rest 
to the soul, but only to change the employments of it from avarice 
to luxury ; his design is to eat and to drink, and to be merry. 
Secondly, that he went on too long before he thought of resting ; 
the fulness of his old barns had not sufficed him, he would stay 
till he was forced to build new ones ; and God meted out to him 
in the same measure ; since he would have more riches than his 
life could contain, God destroyed his life and gave the fruits of it 
to another. 

Thus God takes away sometimes the man from his riches, and 
no less frequently riches from the man : what hope can there be 
of such a marriage where both parties are so fickle and uncertain ; 
by what bonds can such a couple be kept long together? 18 

17 Virgil, Eclogues, I. 74. 

18 Here follow thirteen quatrains on the same theme. 



DISCOURSES, BY WAY OF ESSAYS. 193 



Essay XI. — Of Myself. 

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it 
grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement and the 
reader's ears to hear anything of praise for him. There is no 
danger from me of offending him in this kind ; neither my mind, 
nor my body, nor my fortune allow me any materials for that 
vanity. It is sufficient for my own contentment that they have pre- 
served me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective 
side. But besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in rela- 
tion to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be 
likelier thereby to fall into the contempt than rise up to the esti- 
mation of most people. As far as my memory can return back 
into my past life, before I knew or was capable of guessing what 
the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections 
of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some 
plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imper- 
ceptible to themselves and inscrutable to man's understanding. 
Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running 
about on holidays and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal 
from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or 
with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. 
I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my 
masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encour- 
agements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar, 
in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I 
made a shift to do the usual exercises out of my own reading and 
observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now 
(which, I confess, I wonder at myself) may appear by the latter 
end of an ode which I made when I was but thirteen years old, 
and which was then printed with many other verses. The begin- 
ning of it is boyish, but of this part which I here set down, if a 
very little were corrected, I should hardly now be much ashamed. 



194 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

IX. 

This only grant me, that my means may lie 
Too low for envy, for contempt too high. 

Some honour I would have, 
Not from great deeds, but good alone. 
The unknown are better than ill-known ; 

Rumour can ope the grave. 
Acquaintance I would have, but when't depends 
Not on the number, but the choice of friends. 

X. 

Books should, not business, entertain the light, 
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night. 

My house a cottage more 
Than palace, and should fitting be 
For all my use, no luxury. 

My garden painted o'er 
With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield, 
Horace might envy in his Sabine field. 

XL 

Thus would I double my life's fading space; 
For he that runs it well twice runs his race. 

And in this true delight, 
These unbought sports, this happy state, 
I would not fear, nor wish, my fate; 

But boldly say each night, 
To-morrow let my sun his beams display, 
Or in clouds hide them, — I nave liv'd to-day. 

You may see by it I was even then acquainted with the poets 
(for the conclusion is taken out of Horace), 19 and perhaps it was 
the immature and immoderate love of them which stamped first, 
or rather engraved, these characters in me. They were like letters 
cut into the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow 
proportionably. But how this love came to be produced in me 
so easily is a hard question. I believe I can tell the particular 

19 Horace, Odes, III, 29, 41 ff. 



DISCOURSES, BY WAY OF ESSAYS. 195 

little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse as 
have never since left ringing there. For, I remember when I 
began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to 
lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she 
herself never in her life read any book but of devotion) , but there 
was wont to lie Spenser's works ; this I happened to fall upon, 
and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and 
giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere 
there (though my understanding had little to do with all this) ; 
and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the 
numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was 
twelve years old. . . . With these affections of mind, and my 
heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university, but was 
soon torn from thence by that violent public storm which would 
suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, 
even from the princely cedars to me, the hyssop. Yet I had as 
good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest ; for I 
was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into 
the court of one of the best princesses of the world. Now, though 
I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design 
of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and 
into a daily sight of greatness, both militant and triumphant, for 
that was the state then of the English and French Courts ; yet all 
this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the 
confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural incli- 
nation. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer 
I came to it ; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with 
when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or 
entice me when I saw that it was adulterate. I met with several 
great persons, whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that 
any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more 
than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, though I saw 
many ships which rid safely and bravely in it. A storm would not 
agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. Though I was 
in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, 



196 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I 
eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for 
present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my con- 
dition in banishment and public distresses, yet I could not abstain 
from renewing my old schoolboy's wish in a copy of verses to the 
same effect : 

Well then; I now do plainly see, 

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, etc. 20 

And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from 
His Majesty's happy Restoration, but the getting into some moder- 
ately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that 
case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others,- 1 with 
no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordi- 
nary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophecy against 
myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in 
the elegance of it : 

Thou, neither great at court nor in the war, 
Nor at th' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar; 
Content thyself with the small barren praise, 
Which neglected verse does raise, etc. 22 

However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I 
did not quit the design which I had resolved on ; I cast myself 
into it a corps perdu? 2, without making capitulations or taking 
counsel of fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to his 
soul, " take thy ease " : I met presently not only with many little 
encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a 
new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an 
emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent nor alter my 
course. Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum? A Nothing shall 
separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have 

20 From The Wish. 21 relative omitted. 

22 Cowley inserts two stanzas from one of his Pindaric Odes. 

23 with heart and soul. 

** I did not take a treacherous oath. — Horace, Odes, II. 17, 10. 



DISCOURSES, BY WAY OF ESSAYS. 197 

now at last married, though she neither has brought me a rich 
portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her. 

iVec vos, dulcissima miuidi 



Nomina, vos, Mus<v, libcrtas, otia, libri, 
Hortique sylvccque, anima remanente, relinquam. 

Nor by me e'er shall you, 
You, of all names the sweetest and the best, 
You, Muses, books, and liberty, and rest; 
You, gardens, fields, and woods, forsaken be, 
As long as life itself forsakes not me. 

But this is a very pretty ejaculation. Because I have concluded 
all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the 
humour to the last. 25 

25 Here follow two poetical translations from Martial, Epigrams, Book X. 
47 and 96. 



XL 

EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLAREN- 
DON. 

(1608-1674.) 

ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 
Essay III. — Reflections on the Happiness which we may 

ENJOY IN AND FROM OURSELVES. 
LWritten in 1669.] 

It was a very just reproach that Seneca charged the world with 
so many hundred years ago, and yet was not more the disease of 
that than of this age, that we wonder and complain of the pride 
and superciliousness of those who are in place and authority above 
us : that we cannot get an admittance to them ; that they are 
never at leisure that we may speak to them ; when (says he) we 
are never vacant, never at leisure to speak to ourselves ; "Audet 
quispiam de alterius superbid queri qui sibi ipse nunquam va- 
cat?" 1 and after all complaints and murmurs, the greatest and 
the proudest of them will be sometimes at leisure, may be some- 
times spoken with ; " aliquando respexit, tic non inspicere te un- 
quatn, non audire dignatus es"; 2 we can never get an audience 
of ourselves, never vouchsafe to confer together. We are diligent 
and curious enough to know other men ; and it may be charitable 
enough to assist them, to inform their weakness by our instruc- 
tion, and to reform their errors by our experience : and all this 

1 Does any one dare to complain of the pride of another who is never at 
leisure for himself? — Seneca. 

2 He sometimes paid attention (lit. looked back); you never deigned to look 
■within, to listen to yourself. — Seneca. 






ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 199 

without giving one moment to look into our own, never make an 
inspection into ourselves, nor ask one of those questions of our- 
selves which we are ready to administer to others, and thereby 
imagine that we have a perfect knowledge of them. We live with 
other men, and to other men ; neither with nor to ourselves. We 
may sometimes be at home, left to ourselves, when others are 
weary of us, and we are weary of being with them ; but we do 
not dwell at home, have no commerce, no conversation with our- 
selves, nay, we keep spies about us that we may not have ; and if 
we feel a suggestion, hear an importunate call from within, we di- 
vert it by company or quiet it with sleep ; and when we wake, no 
man runs faster from an enemy than we do from ourselves, get to 
our friends that we may not be with ourselves. This is not only 
an epidemical disease that spreads everywhere, but effected and 
purchased at as great a price as most other of our diseases, with 
the expense of all our precious time ; one moment of which we are 
not willing to bestow upon ourselves, though it would make the 
remainder of it more useful to us, and to others upon whom we 
prodigally consume it, without doing good to them or ourselves : 
whereas, if we would be conversant with ourselves, and as ingenu- 
ous and impartial in that conversation as we pretend to be with 
other men, we should find that we have very much of that at home 
by us, which we take wonderful unnecessary pains to get abroad ; 
and that we have much of that in our own disposal, which we en- 
deavour to obtain from others ; and possess ourselves of that happi- 
ness from ourselves, whether it concerns our ambition or any other 
of our most exorbitant passions or affections, which more provoke 
and less satisfy by resorting to other men ; who are either not will- 
ing to gratify us or not able to comply with our desires ; and the 
trouble and agony, which for the most part accompanies those 
disappointments, proceed merely from our not beginning with 
ourselves before we repair to others. 

It is not the purpose and end of this discourse, to raise such 
seraphical notions of the vanity and pleasures of this world, as 
if they were not worthy to be considered, or could have no 



200 EDWARD HYDE. 

relish with virtuous and pious men. They take very unprofitable 
pains, who endeavour to persuade men that they are obliged wholly 
to despise this world and all that is in it, even whilst they them- 
selves live here : God hath not taken all that pains in forming and 
framing and furnishing and adorning this world, that they who 
were made by him to live in it should despise it ; it will be enough 
if they do not love it so immoderately, to prefer it before Him 
who made it : nor shall we endeavour to extend the notions of the 
Stoic philosophers, and to stretch them farther by the help of 
Christian precepts, to the extinguishing all those affections and 
passions, which are and will always be inseparable from human 
nature ; and which it were to be wished that many Christians 
could govern and suppress and regulate, as well as many of those 
heathen philosophers used to do. As long as the world lasts, and 
honour and virtue and industry have reputation in the world, there 
will be ambition and emulation and appetite in the best and most 
accomplished men who live in it ; if there should not be, more 
barbarity and vice and wickedness would cover every nation of 
the world, than it yet suffers under. If wise and honest and 
virtuously-disposed men quit the field, and leave the world to the 
pillage, and the manners of it to the deformation of persons 
dedicated to rapine, luxury, and injustice, how savage must it grow 
in half an age ! nor will the best princes be able to govern and 
preserve their subjects, if the best men be without ambition and 
desire to be employed and trusted by them. The end therefore 
of this speculation into ourselves, and conversation with ourselves, 
is that we may make our journey towards that which we do pro- 
pose with the more success ; that we may be discreet in proposing 
reasonable designs, and then pursue them by reasonable ways ; 
foresee all the difficulties which are probable to fall out, so we 
may prevent or avoid them ; since we may be sure to master and 
avoid them to a great degree by foreseeing them, and as sure to 
be confounded by them, if they fall upon us without foresight. In 
a word, it is not so to consult with ourselves, as to consult with 
nobody else \ or to dispose us to prefer our own judgment before 



ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 201 

any other man's : but first, by an impartial conference with our- 
selves, we may understand first our own mind, what it is we would 
have, and why we would have it, before we consult with others 
which way to compass it, that we may set both the matter we 
desire and the manner of obtaining it before our own eyes, and 
spend our passions upon ourselves in the disquisition. 

It is no wonder that when we are prodigal of nothing else, when 
we are over-thrifty of many things which we may well spare, we 
are very prodigal of our time, which is the only precious jewel of 
which we cannot be too thrifty, because we look upon it as nothing 
worth, and that makes us not care how we spend it. The labouring 
man and the artificer knows what every hour of his time is worth, 
what it will yield him, and parts not with it but for the full value : 
they are only noblemen and gentlemen, who should know best 
how to use it, that think it only fit to be cast away ; and their not 
knowing how to set a true value upon this, is the true cause of 
the wrong estimate they make of all other things : and their 
ignorance of that proceeds only from their holding no correspon- 
dence with themselves, or thinking at all before they begin their 
journey, before they violently set their affections upon this or that 
object, until they find they are out of the way, and meet with 
false guides to carry them further out. We should find much 
ease in our pursuits, and probably much better success in our 
attempts and enterprises in the world, if, before we are too solici- 
tous and set our heart upon any design, we would well weigh and 
consider the true value of the thing we desire, whether" it be 
indeed worth all that trouble we shall be put to, and all the time 
we are like to spend in the obtaining it, and upon it after we have 
obtained it : if this inquisition doth not divert us, as it need not to 
do, it will the better prepare and dispose us to be satisfied after 
we have it, whereas nothing is more usual than for men who suc- 
ceed in their most impatient pretences, to be more unsatisfied 
with their success than they were before ; it is not worth what 
they thought or were persuaded it would be, so that their appe- 
tite is not at all allayed, nor their gratitude provoked, by the obli- 



202 EDWARD HYDE. 

gation; a little previous consideration .would have better fitted 
the mind to contentedness upon the issue, or diverted it from 
affecting what would not be acceptable when obtained. In the 
next place, we should do well prudently to consider, whether it be 
probable that we shall obtain what we desire, before we engage our 
affections and our passions too deeply in the prosecution of it ; 
not that we may not lawfully affect and prosecute an interest in 
which it is probable we may not succeed. Men who always suc- 
ceed in what they go about, are often the worse for their success ; 
however, we are not naturally delighted with repulses, and are 
commonly angry and sottishly offended with those who obtain that 
for themselves which we would fain have, and as unreasonably 
with those who favour them, though their merit be above our own ; 
and therefore, besides the consideration of the probability that we 
may be disappointed of our end, we shall do well to consider like- 
wise the opposition we are like to meet in the way, the power of 
those persons who are like to disfavour our pretences, and whether 
our exposing ourselves to their displeasure may not be a greater 
damage than the obtaining all that we desire will recompense. 
These and the like reflections will cost us very little time, but 
infinitely advance and improve our understanding ; and if we then 
conclude it fit to proceed, we shall do it with confidence, and be 
disturbed with no accident which encounters us, and be prepared 
to behave ourselves decently upon the repulse, which oftentimes 
prefers men better than they wished ; a virtuous mind appearing 
with more lustre in the rejection than in the reception of good 
turns, and consequently reconciling him to those who knew him 
not enough before. 

These considerations will be most impartially and sincerely 
debated with ourselves, yet they may be properly enough and 
usefully consulted with very true and faithful friends, if indeed we 
abound with such treasure. But there is another consideration so 
proper and peculiar for ourselves, and to be exactly weighed by 
ourselves, that the most faithful friend is rarely faithful enough to 
be trusted enough in the disquisition, and, which is worst of all, 



ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 203 

we do not wish or desire that he should be faithful ; that is, 
whether we are in truth fit and worthy of the thing we do affect ; 
if it be an honour, whether it be not too great for us ; if it be an 
office, whether we are equal to it ; that is, fit and capable to dis- 
charge and execute it, or can make ourselves so by the industry 
and diligence we are like to contribute towards it : this is the 
examination we come with least ingenuity to, and friends are 
ingenuous in assisting us in ; and yet is of that importance, that 
much of the happiness of our life consists in it, many having been 
made unhappy and even very miserable by preferment, who were 
in good reputation without it. Tully makes it a necessary ingredi- 
ent in, or a necessary concomitant of friendship itself. " Tantum 
cuique tribuendum est, primum, quantum ipse efficere possis, de- 
inde etiam quantum quern diligas atque adjuves,possit sustinere; " 3 
it is a very imprudent and unjust thing to oblige a friend to do 
that out of his friendship to thee, which either he cannot do, or 
not without great prejudice to himself, but it is an impudent 
violation of friendship, to importune him to procure a favour to be 
conferred upon thee which thou canst not sustain ; to put the 
command of a ship into thy hand, when thou knowest neither the 
compass nor the rudder. There are as great incongruities and 
incapacities towards the execution of many offices, which do not 
appear so gross to the first discovery. This scrutiny cannot be so 
rigidly and effectually made without well weighing, in the first 
place, the infinite prejudice that befalls ourselves, if we are incom- 
petent for that place or office which we have by much solicitation 
obtained, and the unspeakable and irreparable prejudice we have 
brought upon our friends who obtained it for us. How many 
men have we known, who, from a reservedness in their nature, 
have been thought to observe much, and by saying little have been 
believed to know much ; but when they have got themselves into 
an office, and so been compelled to speak and direct, have ap- 
peared weak and ignorant, and incapable of performing their duty ; 

3 So much must be given, to each one, first, as you yourself can perform, 
next, also, as he whom you love ami aid can sustain. — ClCERO. 



204 EDWARD HYDE. 

and so must either be removed, to their own shame and reproach, 
or be continued, to the public detriment and dishonour? How 
much better had it been for such men to have remained unknown 
and secure under the shadow of their friends' good opinion, than 
to have been exposed to the light, and made known only by the 
discovery of their incredible ignorance ! We have known many- 
men who, in a place to which they have been unhappily promoted, 
have appeared scandalously insufficient ; but being removed to 
another have discharged it with notable abilities : yet there was 
nothing new in himself; if he had asked advice of himself, he 
would have known all that hath fallen out since so much to his 
prejudice. He who hath credit with his prince, or with his friend, 
to prefer or recommend a man to his near and entire trust, hath 
a great trust himself reposed in him, which he is obliged to dis- 
charge with the utmost circumspection and fidelity ; and if he be 
swayed by the confidence and importunity, or corrupted by his 
own affection, and recommends thee to an employment, which 
when thou art possessed oT thou canst not discharge, with what 
confusion must he look upon him whom he hath deceived and 
betrayed, or can he ever look again to be depended upon or 
advised with upon the like affair ? Doing good offices and good 
turns (as men call it) looks like the natural effect of a noble and 
a generous nature. Indeed the inclination to it is an argument of 
generosity ; but a precipitate entering upon the work itself, and 
embracing all opportunities to gratify the pretences of unwary 
men, is an evidence of a light and easy nature, disposed, at other 
men's charges, to get himself well spoken of. 

They who revolve these particulars, cannot but think them 
worthy a very serious examination, and must discern that, by 
entering into this strict consultation with themselves in or before 
the beginning of any business, they shall prevent much trouble 
and labour which they shall not be able afterwards to avoid : nor 
can they prudently or 'so successfully consult with others, before 
they first deliberate with themselves the very method and manner 
of communicating with another, how much a friend soever, what 



ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 205 

concerns one's self requiring as much consideration as the matter 
itself. But there is another benefit and advantage that results 
from this intercourse and acquaintance with ourselves, more con- 
siderable than anything which hath been said, which is, that from 
this communication he takes more care to cultivate and improve 
himself, that he may be equal and worthy of that trust which he 
reposes in himself, and fit to consult with and govern himself by ; 
he gets as much information from books and wise men, as may 
enable him to answer and determine those doubtful questions 
which may arise ; he extinguishes that choler and prejudice which 
would interrupt him in hearing, and corrupt him in judging what 
he hears. It is a notable injunction that Seneca imposes, who 
knew as well as any man what man could bring himself to " Dum 
te efficis eum, coram quo peccare non audeas ; " 4 the truth is, he 
hath too little reverence for himself, who dares do that in his own 
presence, which he would be ashamed, or not dare to do before 
another man ; and it is for want of acquaintance with ourselves 
and revolving the dignity of our creation, that we are without that 
reverence. Who, that doth consider how near he is of kin to God 
himself, and how excellently he is qualified by him to judge aright 
of all the delusions and appearances of the world, if he will 
employ those faculties he hath adorned him with ; that nobody is 
able to deceive him, if he doth not concur and contribute to the 
deceiving himself: I say, who can consider and weigh this, and 
at the same time bury all those faculties of the discerning soul in 
sensual pleasures, laziness, and senseless inactivity and as much as 
in his power, and God knows there is too much in his power, to 
level himself with the beasts that perish ? It is a foolish excuse 
we make upon all occasions for ourselves and other men, in our 
laboured and exalted acts of folly and madness, that we can be no 
wiser than God hath made us, as if the defects in our will were 
defects in his providence ; when in truth God hath given us all that 
we will make ourselves capable of, that we will receive from him. 

4 Whilst thou makest thyself one in whose presence thou dare not sin. — . 
Seneca. 



206 EDWARD HYDE. 

He hath given us life, that is time, to make ourselves learned, to 
make ourselves wise, to make us discern and judge of all the 
mysteries of the world : if we will bestow this time, which would 
supply us with wisdom and knowledge, in wine and women, which 
corrupt the little understanding that nature hath given us ; if we 
will barter it away for skill in horses, dogs, and hawks ; and if we 
will throw it away in play and gaming ; it is from our own villany 
that we are fools, and have rejected the effects of his providence. 
It is no wiser an allegation, that our time is our own, and we may 
use it as we please : there is nothing so much our own that we 
may use it as we please : we cannot use our money, which is as 
much, if not more, our own than anything we have, to raise 
rebellion against our prince, or to hire men to do mischief to our 
neighbours ; we cannot use our bodies, which, if anything, are 
our own, in duels or any unlawful enterprise : and why should we 
then believe that we have so absolute and sovereign a disposal of 
our time, that we may choose whether we will dispose it to any- 
thing or no ? It were to be wished that all men did believe, which 
they have all great reason to do, that the consumption and spend- 
ing of our time will be the great inquisition of the last and terrible 
day : when there shall be a more strict enquiry how the most 
dissolute person, the most debauched bankrupt, spent his time, 
than how he spent his estate ; no doubt it will then manifestly 
appear that our precious time was not lent to us to do nothing 
with, or to be spent upon that which is worse than nothing ; and 
we shall not be more confounded with anything, than to find that 
there is a perfect register kept of all that we did in that time ; 
and that when we have scarce remembered the morrow what we 
did yesterday, there is a diary in which nothing we did is left out, 
and as much notice taken when we did nothing at all. This will 
be a sad animadversion when it is too late, and when probably it 
may appear that the very idle man, he who hath never employed 
himself, may be in a very little better condition than he who hath 
been worst employed ; when idleness shall be declared to be a 
species of wickedness, and doing nothing to be the activity of a 



ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 207 

beast. There cannot therefore be too serious or too early a reflec- 
tion upon the good husbandry of this precious talent, which we 
are entrusted with, not to be laid out in vain pleasures whereof we 
are ashamed as soon as we have enjoyed them, but in such profit- 
able exchanges that there may be some record of our industry, if 
there be none of our getting. 

The truth is, if incogitance 5 and inadvertence, not thinking at 
all, not considering anything (which is degrading ourselves as much 
as is in our power from being men, by renouncing the faculties 
of a reasonable soul) were not our mortal disease, it might be 
believed that the consumption of our time proceeds from the 
contempt we have of wisdom and virtue ; for in order to anything 
else we employ it well enough. How can we pretend that we 
desire to be wise, when we do no one thing that is in order to it ; 
or that we love virtue, when we do not cultivate any one affection 
that would advance it, nor subdue any one passion that destroys 
it? We see the skill and perfection in the meanest and lowest 
trade is obtained by industry and instruction and observation, and 
that with all that application very much time is necessary to it ; 
and can we believe that wisdom, which is the greatest perfection 
and highest operation of the soul can be got without industry and 
labour ? Can we hope to find gold upon the surface of the earth, 
when we dig almost to the centre of it to find lead and tin and the 
coarser metals? It is very wonderful if it be not very ridiculous, 
to see a man take great pains to learn to dance, and not to be at 
leisure to learn to read ; that man should set a very high esteem 
upon the decent motion and handsome figure of the body, and 
undervalue the mind so much as not to think it worth any pains 
or consideration to improve the faculties thereof, or to contribute 
to its endowments ; and yet all men's experience supplies them 
with evidence enough, that the excellent symmetry of the body, a 
very handsome outside of a man, doth too frequently expose men 
to derision and notorious contempt, when so gross defects of the 
mind are discovered, as make the other beauty less agreeable by 

5 lack of thought. 



208 EDWARD HYDE. 

being more remarkable : whereas, on the contrary, the beauty of 
the mind doth more frequently reconcile the eyes and ears of all 
men to the most unpromising countenances, and to persons noth- 
ing beholden to nature for any comeliness ; yet the wisdom and 
gravity of their words in persuading and convincing, and the 
sincerity and virtue of their actions, extort an esteem and rever- 
ence from all kind of men, that no comely and graceful outside 
of a man could ever attain to. It is not to be wished that men 
took less care of their bodies than they do \ they cannot be too 
solicitous to preserve their health, and to confirm it, by preventing 
those diseases which the excess and corruption of humours are 
naturally the causes of, with timely physic and seasonable applica- 
tion of remedies, and, above all, by strict and wholesome diet ; 
health is so inestimable a blessing and benefit, that we cannot 
take too much pains, nor study too much, to obtain and preserve 
it : but the grief is, that the whole care is laid out for the body, 
and none at all for the mind ; that we are jealous of every altera- 
tion in our constitution, of every light indisposition of our body, 
that we too commonly apply cures when there are no diseases, 
and cause the sickness we would prevent : when, at the same 
time, there are twenty visible diseases and distempers of our mind, 
which we never look after nor take care of, though they would be 
more easily cured than the other, and being cured, would yield 
that infinite pleasure and satisfaction to the body, that sickness 
itself could not deprive it of. Dost thou find laziness and excess 
of sleep affect thy body ? And dost thou find exercise and mod- 
erate labour revive thy spirits, and increase thy appetite ? Examine 
thy mind, whether it hath not too much emptiness, whether it can 
cogitandi ferre laborem, — whether it can bear the fatigue of 
thinking, — and produce any conclusion from thence ; and then 
administer a fit diet of books to it, and let it take air and exercise 
in honest and cheerful conversation, with men that can descend 
and bow their natures and their understandings to the capacity 
ui 1 tn th~ indisposition and weakness of other men. A sour and 
morose companion is as unnatural a prescription to such a patient, 



ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 209 

as the exercise of tennis is to a man who hath broken a vein, 
when any violent motion may be mortal. If thy mind be loose, 
and most delighted with vain and unclean discourses and unchaste 
desires, prescribe it a diet of contemplation upon the purity of 
the nature of God, and the injunction he hath given us to live by, 
and the frequent conquest men have made thereby upon their 
own most corrupt and depraved affections ; and let it have its 
exercise and recreation with men of that severity, that restrain all 
ill discourse by the gravity of their presence, and yet of that 
candour as may make them agreeable to those who must by 
degrees be brought to love them, and to find another kind of 
pleasure, yet pleasure that hath a greater relish in their company 
than in those they have been most accustomed to. Men give 
over the diseases of the mind as incurable ; call them infirmities 
of nature, which cannot be subdued, hardly corrected ; or sub- 
stantial parts of nature, that cannot be cut off, or divided from 
our humanity ; that anger is the result of a generous nature, that 
will not, ought not to submit to injuries and affronts ; that lust is 
so inseparable from our nature, that nothing but want of health 
can allay it ; that there is no other way to cure the disease but to 
kill the patient, that it proceeds not from any virtuous habit of the 
mind, where these natural affections and appetites do not prevail, 
but from some depraved constitution of the body, which stifles 
and suppresses those desires, for want of that moisture and heat 
that should nourish them, and that conscience hath no more to 
do in the conquest, than courage hath an operation in him who 
takes an enemy prisoner who lies prostrate at his feet : whereas 
all those, and other diseases of the mind, for diseases they are, 
are much more curable than those of the body, and so much the 
more as they are most subject to our own administration; when 
we must resort to the skill and ability of other men to devise and 
compound properremedies for the other cure. Many accidents 
of heat or cold or diet, or the very remedies prescribed, very 
often make the diseases of the body incurable, and the recovery 
impossible ; whereas the application to the mind, though unskil- 



210 EDWARD HYDE. 

fully and unseasonably made, does no harm if it does no good, 
and the mind remains still as capable of the same or other 
medicines as it was before. Nor is there any enormous or unruly 
infirmity so annexed to or rooted in our nature, but that the like 
hath been frequently severed from or eradicated out of it, by vir- 
tuous and conscientious precepts and practice, and every man's 
observation and experience supplies him with examples enough of 
men far from sobriety, who, to comply with some infirmity, have 
forborne all wine and intemperance for some months ; and of 
others of no restrained appetites, who upon the obligation of a 
promise or virtuous resolution, have abstained a longer time from 
any acts of uncleanness ; and whosoever can impose such a law 
upon himself for so many months, can do the same for so many 
years ; a firm and magnanimous resolution can exercise that 
discipline upon the mind that it shall never make any excursions 
from reason and good behaviour. If they can be brought but 
laborem ferre cogitandi, the worst is over, and their recovery is 
not desperate. 

Since then it is and may be made evident enough that the 
greatest infirmities and deformities of the mind may be reformed 
and rectified by industry and reasonable applications, there can be 
but one reason why there is so little used in those cases, since all 
men desire to be wise, or to be reputed wise ; and that is, that 
there is no need of it : nature's store and provision is sufficient ; 
conversation with witty men, and an ordinary observation of the 
current and conduct of business, will make men as wise as they 
need to be ; and the affectation of books doth but introduce 
pedantry into the manners of men, and make them impertinent 
and troublesome : that men of great learning in books are fre- 
quently found to be the most incompetent judges or advisers in the 
most important transactions of the affairs of the world, and of the 
interest of states. And by this unreasonable jolly discourse, and 
contempt of the learned languages, there seems to be a combina- 
tion entered into against learning, and against any such education 
as may dispose them to it : as if the excellent endowments of 






ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 211 

nature would be eclipsed by reading books, and would hinder them 
from learning more in the company they might keep than they can 
obtain from other, and that the other method makes them men 
much sooner : and upon this ground, which hath gotten too much 
countenance in the world, the universities and inns of court which 
have been the seminaries out of which our ancestors have grown 
to be able to serve their country with great reputation and success, 
are now declined as places which keep hopeful youth too long boys, 
and infect them with formalities and impertinent knowledge, of 
which they shall have little use, and send them out late and less 
prepared for and inclined to those generous qualifications, which 
are most like to raise their fortunes and their reputations. Which 
sure is a very great error, and hath been the source from whence 
many mischiefs have flowed. And to speak first of this extolled 
breeding in good company and travel into foreign parts before 
they know any thing of their own country ; and getting the vice 
and the language of that, before they can secure themselves from 
the one, or understand their own native tongue ; we have the 
knowledge and experience of many who have, indeed, the confi- 
dence and presumption of men, but retain the levity and folly of 
children : and if they are able to disguise those weaknesses, and 
appear in their behaviour and discourse earlier men than others of 
their age seem to be (as it many times falls out, especially in men 
endowed with any principles of modesty,) yet those very early 
men decay apace, for want of nourishment at the roots, and we too 
frequently see those who seem men at twenty years of age, when 
the gaiety of their youth decays, and themselves grow weary of 
those exercises and vanities which then became them, become 
boys at thirty ; having no supply of parts for business, or grave 
and sober conversation, they then grow out of love with themselves, 
and too soon lament those defects and impotency in themselves, 
which nothing but some degree of learning and acquaintance with 
books could have prevented. And to say that they can fall to it 
afterwards, and recover the time they have lost when they will, is 
no more reasonable (though there have been some very rare 



212 EDWARD HYDE. 

examples of such industry) than to imagine that a man, after he is 
forty years of age, may learn to dance as well as if he had begun 
it sooner. He who loves not books before he comes to thirty 
years of age, will hardly love them enough afterwards to under- 
stand them. The conversation with wise and good men cannot be 
overvalued, it forms the mind and understanding for noble and 
lieroical undertakings, and is much to be preferred before the mere 
learning of books, in order to be wise ; but where a good founda- 
tion of the knowledge and understanding of books is first laid, 
to support the excellent superstructure of such conversation, the 
advance must be made much more advantageously, than when 
nothing but the ordinary endowments of nature are brought to 
be cultivated by conversation ; which is commonly chosen with men 
of the same talents, who gratify one another with believing that 
they want not any extraordinary improvement, and so join together 
in censuring and condemning what they do not understand, and 
think that men have only better fortune than they who have got 
credit without being in any degree wiser than themselves. 

It is very true, there have been very extraordinary men in all 
nations, who, by their great experience, and a notable vivacity of 
spirit, have not only attained to eminent promotion, but have been 
exceedingly worthy of it ; albeit they have been upon the matter 
illiterate, as to the learning of books and the learned languages ; 
but then they have been eminently industrious, who, having had 
the good fortune to be educated in constant labour, under wise and 
experienced men, have, by indefatigable pains and observation, 
gotten the learning of business without the learning of books, and 
cannot properly be accounted illiterate, though they know little 
Latin or Greek. We speak of books and learning, not of the lan- 
guage in which they are writ. The French and the Italian and 
the Spanish have many excellent books of all kinds ; and they 
who are well versed in those languages, may be very learned, 
though they know no others : and the truth is, the French, whether 
by the fertility of their language, or the happy industry of many 
excellent persons, have translated most good authors both of the 



ESSAYS, MORAL AND ENTERTAINING. 213 

Greek and Latin, with that admirable facility that little of the 
spirit and vigour even of the style of the best writers is dimin- 
ished ; an advantage the English industry and curiosity hath not 
yet brought home to that nation : they who have performed that 
office hitherto, for the most part, having done it for profit, and to 
live, without any delight in the pains they take ; and though they 
may have had some competent knowledge of the language out of 
which they have translated, have been very far from understanding 
their own mother-tongue, and being versed in the fruitful produc- 
tions of the English language. But though learning may be thus 
attained by many nations in their own proper dialect, and the lan- 
guage of their own country, yet few men who take the pains to 
search for it in their own, but have the curiosity to look into the 
original, and are conversant in those which are still, and still will 
be, called the learned languages ; nor is yet any man eminent for 
knowledge and learning that was not conversant in other tongues 
besides his own ; and it may be, those two necessary sciences, 
that is, the principles of them, grammar and logic, can very hardly 
be so well and conveniently taught and understood as by Latin. 
It shall serve my turn, and I shall willingly comply with and gratify 
our beloved modern education, if they take the pains to read good 
books in that language they understand best and like most ; I had 
almost said, if they will read any books, be so much alone as read- 
ing employs ; if they will take as much pains to be wise and 
polish their minds, as they do to order and dispose their clothes 
and their hair ; if they will put that constraint upon themselves 
in order to be learned, as they do to attain to a perfection in any 
bodily exercise ; and, lastly, which is worth all the rest, if they will 
as heartily endeavour to please God, as they do those for whom 
they have no great affection, every great man whose favour they 
solicit, and affect being good Christians as much as they do to be 
fine gentlemen, they shall find their labour as much less, as their 
reward and recompense will be greater. If they will not do this, 
they must not take it ill if it be believed that they are without 
knowledge that their souls are to outlive their bodies ; and that 



214 EDWARD HYDE. 

they do not so much wish to go to Heaven, as to get the next bet 
at play, or to win the next horse-race they are to run. 

To conclude : If books and industry will not contribute to their 
being wise, and to their salvation, they will receive from it (which 
they value more) pleasure and refreshment in this world ; they 
will have less melancholy in the distress of their fortune, less anx- 
iety in the mortification of sickness ; they will not so much com- 
plain for want of company, when all their companions forsake 
them ; their age will be less grievous unto them ; and God may so 
bless it, without any intention of their own, that such thoughts 
may insensibly insinuate themselves into them, that they may go 
out of the world with less dismal apprehensions, and conclude 
their neglected lives with more tranquillity of spirit, at least not be 
so much terrified with the approach of death, as men who have 
never entertained any sober thoughts of life have used to be, and 
naturally must be. 



XII. 

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

(1628-1699.) 

ESSAY UPON THE ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 

[Written before 1688.] 

Thus much I thought might be allowed me to say, for the 
giving some idea of what those sages or learned men were, or 
may have been, who were ancients to those that are ancients to us. 
Now to observe what these have been, is more easy and obvious. 
The most ancient Grecians that we are at all acquainted with, 
after Lycurgus, who was certainly a great philosopher as well as 
lawgiver, were the seven sages : though the Court of Croesus is 
said to have been much resorted to by the sophists of Greece in 
the happy beginnings of his reign. And some of these seven 
seem to have brought most of the sciences out of Egypt and 
Phcenica into Greece ; particularly those of astronomy, astrology, 
geometry, and arithmetic. These were soon followed by Pythag- 
oras (who seems to have introduced natural and moral philoso- 
phy) and by several of nis followers, both in Greece and Italy. 
But of all these there remains nothing in writing now among us ; 
so that Hippocrates, Plato, and Xenophon, are the first philoso- 
phers whose works have escaped the injuries of time. But that we 
may not conclude the first writers we have of the Grecians were the 
first learned or wise among them ; we shall find upon enquiry that 
the more ancient sages of Greece appear, by the characters 
remaining of them, to have been much the greater men. They 
were generally princes or lawgivers of their countries, or at least 
offered and invited to be so, either of their own or of others, that 

215 



216 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

desired them to frame or reform their several institutions of civil 
government. They were commonly excellent poets, and great 
physicians : they were so learned in natural philosophy that they 
foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land, 
and storms at sea, great droughts, and great plagues, much plenty, 
or much scarcity of certain sorts of fruits or grain ; not to men- 
tion the magical powers attributed to several of them, to allay 
storms, to raise gales, to appease commotions of people, to make 
plagues cease ; which qualities, whether upon any ground of truth 
or no, yet, if well believed, must have raised them to that strange 
height they were at, of common esteem and honour, in their own 
and succeeding ages. 

By all this may be determined whether our moderns or our 
ancients may have had the greater and the better guides, and 
which of them have taken the greater pains, and with the more 
application in the pursuit of knowledge. And, I think, it is enough 
to shew that the advantages we have from those we call the 
ancients may not be greater than what they had from those that 
were so to them. 

But after all, I do not know whether the high flights of wit and 
knowledge, like those of power and of empire in the world, may 
not have been made by the pure native force of spirit or genius, 
in some single men, rather than by any derived strength among 
them, however increased by succession ; and whether they may 
not have been the achievements of nature, rather than the im- 
provements of art. Thus the conquests of Ninus and Semiramis, 
of Alexander and Tamerlane, which I take to have been the 
greatest recorded in story, were at their height in those persons that 
began them ; and so far from being increased by their successors, 
that they were not preserved in their extent and vigour by any of 
them, grew weaker in every hand they passed through, or were 
divided into many that set up for great Princes, out of several 
small ruins of the first empires, till they withered away in time, or 
were lost by the change of names, and forms of families or govern- 
ments. 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 217 

Just the same fate seems to have attended the highest nights of 
learning and of knowledge, that are upon our registers. Thales, 
Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, 
were the first mighty conquerors of ignorance in our world, and 
made greater progress in the several empires of science than any 
of their successors have been since able to reach. These have 
hardly ever pretended more than to learn what the others taught, 
to remember what they invented, and, not able to compass that 
itself, they have set up for authors upon some parcels of those 
great stocks, or else have contented themselves only to comment 
upon those texts, and make the best copies they could, after those 
originals. 

I have long thought that the different abilities of men, which 
we call wisdom or prudence for the conduct of public affairs or 
private life, grow directly out of that little grain of intellect or 
good sense which they bring with them into our world * and that 
the defect of it in men comes from some want in their conception 

or birth. 

Dixitque semcl nascentibus auclor, 
Quicquid scire licet}- 

And though this may be improved or impaired in some degree by 
accidents of education, of study, and of conversation and busi- 
ness, yet it cannot go beyond the reach of its native force, 
no more than life can beyond the period to which it was des- 
tined. 2 . . . 

If these speculations should be true, then I know not what 
advantages we can pretend to modern knowledge by any we 
receive from the ancients : nay it is possible, men may lose rather 
than gain by them ; may lessen the force and growth of their own 
genius by constraining and forming it upon that of others ; may 
have less knowledge of their own for contenting themselves with 
that of those before them. So a man that only translates, shall 
never be a poet, nor a painter that only copies, nor a swimmer 

1 And the Creator said once to those bom whatever they should know. 

2 One line omitted. 



21S SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

that swims always with bladders. So people that trust wholly to 
others charity, and without industry of their own, will be always 
poor. 

Besides, who can tell whether learning may not even weaken 
invention in a man that has great advantages from nature and 
birth ; whether the weight and number of so many other men's 
thoughts and notions may not suppress his own, or hinder the 
motion and agitation of them, from which all invention arises ; 
as heaping on wood, or too many sticks, or too close together, 
suppresses, and sometimes quite extinguishes, a little spark that 
would otherwise have grown up to a noble flame. The strength 
of mind, as well as of body, grows more from the warmth of 
exercise, than of cloaths ; nay, too much of this foreign heat 
rather makes men faint, and their constitutions tender or weaker 
than they would be without them. Let it come about how it will, 
if we are dwarfs, we are still so though we stand upon a giant's 
shoulders ; and even so placed, yet we see less than he, if we are 
naturally shorter sighted, or if we do not look as much about us, 
or if we are dazzled with the height, which often happens from 
weakness either of heart or brain. 

In the growth and stature of souls, as well as bodies, the com- 
mon productions are of indifferent sizes, that occasion no gazing, 
nor no wonder : but, though there are or have been sometimes 
dwarfs and sometimes giants in the world, yet it does not follow 
that there must be such in every age, nor in every country : this 
we can no more conclude, than that there never have been any, 
because there are none now, at least in the compass of our present 
knowledge or enquiry. As I believe there may have been giants 
at some time, and some place or other in the world, or such a 
stature as may not have been equalled perhaps again in several 
thousands of years, or in any other parts ; so there may be giants 
in wit and knowledge, of so overgrown a size, as not to be equalled 
again in many successions of ages, or any compass of place or 
country. Such, I am sure, Lucretius esteems and describes Epi- 
curus to have been, and to have risen, like a prodigy of invention 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 219 

and knowledge, such as had not been before, nor was like to be 
again ; and I know not why others of the ancients may not be 
allowed to have been as great in their kinds, and to have built as 
high, though upon different schemes or foundations. Because 
there is a stages head at Amboyse of a most prodigious size, and 
a large table at Memorancy cut out of the thickness of a vine- 
stock, is it necessary that there must be, every age, such a stag in 
every great forest, or such a vine in every large vineyard ; or that 
the productions of nature, in any kind, must be still alike, or some- 
thing near it, because nature is still the same? May there not 
many circumstances concur to one production that do not to any 
other in one or many ages ? In the growth of a tree, there is 
the native strength of the seed, both from the kind, and from the 
perfections of its ripening, and from the health and vigour of the 
plant that bore it : there is the degree of strength and excellence 
in that vein of earth where it first took root : there is a propriety 
of soil suited to the kind of tree that grows in it : there is a great 
favour or disfavour to its growth from accidents of water and of 
shelter, from the kindness or unkindness of seasons, till it be past 
the need or the danger of them. All these, and perhaps many 
others, joined with the propitiousness of climate to that sort of 
tree, and the length of age it shall stand and grow, may produce 
an oak, a fig or a plane-tree that shall deserve to be renowned 
in story, and shall not perhaps be paralleled in other countries or 
times. 

May not the same have happened in the production, growth, and 
size of wit and genius in the world, or in some parts or ages of it, 
and from many more circumstances that contributed towards it, 
than what may concur to the stupendous growth of a tree or ani- 
mal? May there not have been, in Greece or Italy of old, such 
prodigies of invention and learning in philosophy, mathematics, 
physic, oratory, poetry, that none has ever since approached them, 
as well as there were in painting, statuary, architecture? And yet 
their unparalleled and inimitable excellencies in these are undis- 
puted. Science and arts have run their circles, and had their 



220 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

periods in the several parts of the world ; they are generally agreed 
to have held their course from East to West, to have begun in 
Chaldea and Egypt, to have been transplanted from thence to 
Greece, from Greece to Rome ; to have sunk there, and after many 
ages, to have revived from those ashes, and to have sprung up 
again both in Italy and other more western provinces of Europe. 
When Chaldea and Egypt were learned and civil, Greece and 
Rome were as rude and barbarous as all Egypt and Syria now 
are, and have been long. When Greece and Rome were at their 
heights in arts and sciences, Gaul, Germany, Britain, were as igno- 
rant and barbarous as any parts of Greece or Turkey can be now. 

These, and greater changes, are made in the several countries 
of the world, and courses of time, by the revolutions of empire, the 
devastations of armies, the cruelties of conquering and the calam- 
ities of enslaved nations ; by the violent inundations of water in 
some countries, and the cruel ravages of plagues in others. These 
sorts of accidents sometimes lay them so waste, that, when they 
rise again, it is from such low beginnings that they look like new- 
created regions, or growing out of the original state of mankind, 
and without any records or remembrances beyond certain short 
periods of time. Thus that vast continent of Norway is said to 
have been so wholly desolated by a plague, about eight or nine 
hundred years ago, that it was for some ages following a very 
desart, and since all over-grown with wood : and Ireland was so 
spoiled and wasted by the conquest of the Scutes and Danes, that 
there hardly remains any story or tradition what that island was, 
how planted or governed about five hundred years ago. What 
changes have been made by violent storms and inundations of the 
sea in the maritime provinces of the Low-Countries, is hard to 
know, or to believe what is told, nor how ignorant they have left 
us of all that passed there before a certain and short period of 
time. 

The accounts of many other countries would perhaps as hardly, 
and as late, have waded out of the depths of time, and gulphs of 
ignorance, had it not been for the assistances of those two Ian- 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 221 

guages to which we owe all we have of learning or ancient records 
in the world. For whether we have anything of the old Chaldean, 
Hebrew, Arabian, that is truly genuine or more ancient than the 
Augustan age, I am much in doubt ; yet it is probable the vast 
Alexandrian library must have chiefly consisted of books com- 
posed in those languages, with the Egyptian, Syrian, and Ethiopic, 
or at least translated out of them by the care of the Egyptian 
kings or priests, as the Old Testament was, wherein the Septua- 
gints employed left their names to that famous translation. 

It is very true and just, all that is said of the mighty progress 
that learning and knowledge have made in these western parts of 
Europe, within these hundred and fifty years ; but that does not 
conclude it must be at a greater height than it had been in other 
countries, where it was growing much longer periods of time ; it 
argues more how low it was then amongst us, rather than how high 
it is now. 

Upon the fall of the Roman empire, almost all learning was 
buried in its ruins : the Northern nations that conquered, or 
rather overwhelmed it by their numbers, were too barbarous to 
preserve the remains of learning or civility more carefully than 
they did those of statuary or architecture, which fell before their 
brutish rage. The Saracens indeed from their conquests of 
Egypt, Syria, and Greece, carried home great spoils of learning, as 
well as other riches, and gave the original of all that knowledge 
which flourished for some time among the Arabians, and has 
since been copied out of many authors among them, as theirs 
have been out of those of the countries they had subdued ; nor 
indeed do learning, civility, morality, seem anywhere to have 
made a greater growth, in so short a time, than in that empire, 
nor to have flourished more than in the reign of their great Al- 
manzor, under whose victorious ensigns Spain was conquered by 
the Moors ; but the Goths, and all the rest of those Scythian 
swarms that from beyond the Danube and the Elbe, under so 
many several names, over-ran all Europe, took very hardly and 
very late any tincture of the learning and humanity that had flour- 



222 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

ished in the several regions of it, under the protection and by the 
example and instructions of the Romans that had so long possessed 
them : those Northern nations were indeed easier induced to em- 
brace the religion of those they had subdued, and by their devo- 
tion gave great authority and revenues, and thereby ease, to the 
clergy, both secular and regular, through all their conquests. 
Great numbers of the better sort among the oppressed natives, 
finding this vein among them, and no other way to be safe and 
quiet under such rough masters, betook themselves to the profes- 
sion and assemblies of religious orders and fraternities, and among 
those only were preserved all the poor remainders of learning in 
these several countries. But these good men either contented 
themselves with their devotion, or with the ease of quiet lives, or 
else employed their thoughts and studies to raise and maintain 
the esteem and authority of that sacred order, to which they owed 
the safety and repose, the wealth and honour they enjoyed. And 
in this they so well succeeded that the conquerors were governed 
by those they had subdued, the greatest Princes by the meanest 
Priests, and the victorious Franks and Lombard Kings fell at the 
feet of the Roman Prelates. Whilst the clergy were busied in 
these thoughts or studies, the better sort among the laity were 
wholly turned to arms and to honour, the meaner sort to labour 
or to spoil ; Princes taken up with wars among themselves, or in 
those of the Holy Land, or between the Popes and Emperors 
upon disputes of the ecclesiastical and secular powers j learning 
so little in use among them that few could write or read besides 
those of the long robes. During this course of time, which lasted 
many ages in the western parts of Europe, the Greek tongue was 
wholly lost, and the purity of the Roman to that degree that what 
remained of it was only a certain jargon rather than Latin, that 
passed among the Monks and Friars who were at all learned ; and 
among the students of the several universities, which served to 
carry them to Rome in pursuit of preferments or causes depend- 
ing there, and little else. 

When the Turks took Constantinople, about two hundred years 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 223 

ago, and soon after possessed themselves of all Greece, the poor 
natives, fearing the tyranny of those cruel masters, made their 
escapes in great numbers to the neighbouring parts of Christendom, 
some by the Austrian territories into Germany, others by the 
Venetian into Italy and France ; several that were learned among 
these Grecians (and brought many ancient books with them in 
that language) began to teach it in these countries ; first to gain 
subsistence, and afterwards favour in some Princes' or great men's 
courts, who began to take a pleasure or pride in countenancing 
learned men. Thus began the restoration of learning in these 
parts with that of the Greek tongue ; and soon after, Reuchlyn 
and Erasmus began that of the purer and ancient Latin. After 
them, Buchanan 3 carried it, I think, to the greatest height of any 
of the moderns before or since. The Monkish Latin upon his 
return was laughed out of doors, and remains only in the inns of 
Germany or Poland ; and with the restitution of these two noble 
languages, and the books remaining of them (which many Princes 
and Prelates were curious to recover and collect) learning of all 
sorts began to thrive in these Western regions : and since that time 
and in the first succeeding century, made perhaps a greater growth 
than in any other that we know of in such a compass of time, 
considering into what depths of ignorance it was sunk before. 

But why from thence should be concluded, that it has out-grown 
all that was ancient, I see no reason. If a strong and vigorous 
man at thirty years old should fall into a consumption, and so 
draw on till fifty in the extremest weakness and infirmity ; after 
that, should begin to recover health till sixty ; so as to be again as 
strong as men usually are at that age : it might perhaps truly be 
said in that case, that he had grown more in strength that last ten 
years than any others of his life, but not that he was grown to 
more strength and vigour than he had at thirty years old. 

But what are the sciences wherein we pretend to excel ? I know 
of no new philosophers that have made entries upon that noble 

3 George Buchanan (i 506-1582), the learned Scotchman, noted especially 
for his " History of Scotland." He wrote altogether in Latin. 



224 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

stage for fifteen hundred years past, unless Des Cartes and Hobbes 
should pretend to it ; of whom I shall make no critique here, but 
only say, that, by what appears of learned men's opinions in this 
age, they have by no means eclipsed the lustre of Plato, Aristotle, 
Epicurus, or others of the ancients. For grammar or rhetoric, 
no man ever disputed it with them ; nor for poetry, that I ever 
heard of, besides the new French author 4 I have mentioned ; and 
against whose opinion there could, I think, never have been given 
stronger evidence than by his own poems, printed together with 
that treatise. 

There is nothing new in Astronomy to vie with the ancients, 
unless it be the Copernican system ; nor in Physic, unless Harvey's 
circulation of the blood. But whether either of these be modern 
discoveries, or derived from old fountains, is disputed ; nay, it is 
so too, whether they are true or no ; for, though reason may seem 
to favour them more than the contrary opinions, yet sense can 
very hardly allow them ; and, to satisfy mankind, both these must 
concur. But if they are true, yet these two great discoveries have 
made no change in the conclusions of Astronomy, nor in the prac- 
tice of Physic ; and so have been of little use to the world, though 
perhaps of much honour to the authors. 

What are become of the charms of Music, by which men and 
beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents, were so frequently enchanted, 
and their very natures changed ; by which the passions of men 
were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as sud- 
denly appeased, so as they might be justly said to be turned into 
lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms 
of this admirable art? It is agreed by the learned that the science 
of music, so admired of the ancients, is wholly lost in the world ; 
and that what we have now, is made up out of certain notes that 
fell into the fancy or observation of a poor frier, in chanting his 
matins. So as those two divine excellencies of music and poetry 

4 Fontenelle (165 7-1 757) who published his " Conversations on the Plurality 
of Worlds," in 1686, and his "Treatise on the Ancients and the Moderns," in 
1688, taking the modern side. 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 225 

are grown, in a manner, to be little more but the one fiddling, and 
the other rhyming ; and are indeed very worthy the ignorance of 
the frier, and the barbarousness of the Goths, that introduced them 
among us. 

What have we remaining of Magic, by which the Indians, the 
Chaldeans, the Egyptians, were so renowned, and by which effects 
so wonderful, and to common men so astonishing were produced, 
as made them have recourse to Spirits, or supernatural Powers, for 
some account of their strange operations? By Magic, I mean 
some excelling knowledge of nature, and the various powers and 
qualities of its several productions, and the application of certain 
agents to certain patients, which, by force of some peculiar quali- 
ties, produce effects very different from what fall under vulgar 
observation or comprehension. These are by ignorant people 
called Magic or Conjuring, and such like terms ; and an account 
of them, much about as wise, is given by the common learned, 
from Sympathies, Antipathies, Idiosyncrasies, Talismans, and some 
scraps or terms left us by the Egyptians or Grecians, of the 
ancient magic ; but the science seems, with several others, to be 
wholly lost. 

What traces have we left of that admirable science or skill in 
Architecture, by which such stupendous fabrics have been raised of 
old, and so many of the wonders of the world been produced, and 
which are so little approached by our modern achievements of 
this sort, that they hardly fall within our imagination? not to 
mention the walls and palace of Babylon, the pyramids of Egypt, 
the tomb of Mausolus, or colosse of Rhodes, the temples and 
palaces of Greece and Rome ; what can be more admirable in this 
kind than the Roman theatres, their aqueducts, and their bridges, 
among which that of Trajan over the Danube seems to have been 
the last flight of the ancient architecture ? The stupendous effects 
of this science sufficiently evince at what heights the Mathematics 
were among the ancients : but if this be not enough, whoever 
would be satisfied need go no further than the siege of Syracuse, 
and that mighty defence made against the Roman power, more 



226 SIE WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

by the wonderful science and arts of Archimedes, and almost mag- 
ical force of his engines, than by all the strength of the city, or 
number and bravery of the inhabitants. 

The greatest invention that I know of, in latter ages, has been 
that of the loadstone ; and consequently the greatest improve- 
ment has been made in the art of Navigation : yet there must be 
allowed to have been something stupendous in the numbers, and in 
the built of their ships and galleys of old ; and the skill of pilots, 
from the observation of the stars in the more serene climates, may 
be judged by the navigations so celebrated in story of the Tyrians 
and Carthaginians, not to mention other nations. However, it is 
to this we owe the discovery and commerce of so many vast 
countries, which were very little, if at all, known to the ancients, 
and the experimental proof of this terrestrial globe, which was 
before only speculation, but has since been surrounded by the for- 
tune and boldness of several navigators. From this great, though 
fortuitous invention, and the consequences thereof, it must be 
allowed that Geography is mightily advanced in these latter ages. 
The vast continents of China, the East and West Indies, the long 
extent and coasts of Africa, with the numberless islands belonging 
to them, have been hereby introduced into our acquaintance, and 
our maps ; and great increases of wealth and luxury, but none of 
knowledge, brought among us, further than the extent and situa- 
tion of country, the customs and manners of so many original 
nations, which we call barbarous ; and I am sure have treated 
them as if we hardly esteemed them to be a part of mankind. I 
do not doubt, but many great and more noble uses would have 
been made of such conquests or discoveries, if they had fallen to 
the share of the Greeks and Romans, in those ages when knowl- 
edge and fame were in as great request as endless gains and wealth 
are among us now ; and how much greater discoveries might have 
been made by such spirits as theirs, is hard to guess. I am sure, 
ours, though great, yet look very imperfect, as to what the face of 
this terrestial globe would probably appear, if they had been pur- 
sued as far as we might justly have expected from the progresses 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. Ill 

of navigation since the use of the compass, which seems to have 
been long at a stand ; how little has been performed of what has 
been so often and so confidently promised, of a north-west pas- 
sage to the East of Tartary, and North of China? How little do 
we know of the lands on that side of the Magellan Straits that lie 
towards the South pole, which may be vast islands or continents, 
for aught any can yet aver, though that passage was so long since 
found out? Whether Japan be island or continent, with some 
parts of Tartary on the north side, is not certainly agreed. The 
lands of Yedso upon the north-east continent have been no more 
than coasted ; and whether they may not join to the northern con- 
tinent of America, is by some doubted. 

But the defect or negligence seems yet to have been greater 
towards the south, where we know little beyond thirty-five degrees, 
and that only by the necessity of doubling the Cape of Good 
Hope in our East-India vogages : yet a continent has been long 
since found out within fifteen degrees \o South, and about the 
length of Java, which is marked by the name of New Holland 
in the maps, and to what extent none knows, either to the South, 
the East, or the West ; yet the learned have been of opinion, that 
there must be a balance of earth on that side of the line in some 
proportion to what there is on the other ; and that it cannot be all 
sea from thirty degrees to the South pole, since we have found 
land to above sixty-five degrees towards the North. But our 
navigators that way have been confined to the roads of trade, and 
our discoveries bounded by what we can manage to a certain 
degree of gain. And I have heard it said among the Dutch, that 
their East-India Company have long since forbidden, and under 
the greatest penalties, any further attempts of discovering that con- 
tinent, having already more trade in those parts than they can turn 
to account, and fearing some more populous nation of Europe 
might make great establishments of trade in some of those un- 
known regions, which might ruin or impair what they have already 
in the Indies. 

Thus we are lame still in geography itself, which we might have 



228 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

expected to run up to so much greater perfection by the use of 
the compass ; and it seems to have been little advanced these 
last hundred years. So far have we been from improving upon 
those advantages we have received from the knowledge of the 
ancients, that, since the late restoration of learning and arts among 
us, our first flights seem to have been the highest, and a sudden 
damp to have fallen upon our wings, which has hindered us 
from rising above certain heights. The arts of Painting and 
Statuary began to revive with learning in Europe, and made a 
great but short flight ; so as, for these last hundred years, we have 
not had one master in either of them who deserved a rank with 
those that flourished in that short period after they began among 
us. 

It were too great a mortification to think that the same fate has 
happened to us, even in our modern learning ; as if the growth of 
that, as well as of natural bodies, had some short periods beyond 
which it could not reach, and after which it must begin to decay. 
It falls in one country or one age, and rises again in others, but 
never beyond a certain pitch. One man, or one country, at a cer- 
tain time runs a great length in some certain kinds of knowledge, 
but loses as much ground in others, that were perhaps as useful 
and as valuable. There is a certain degree of capacity in the 
greatest vessel, and, when it is full, if you pour in still, it must run 
out some way or other ; and the more it runs out on one side, the 
less runs out at the other. So the greatest memory, after a 
certain degree, as it learns or retains more of some things or words, 
loses and forgets as much of others. The largest and deepest 
reach of thought, the more it pursues some certain subjects, the 
more it neglects others. 

Besides, few men or none excel in all faculties of mind. A 
great memory may fail of invention ; both may want judgment to 
digest or apply what they remember or invent. Great courage 
may want caution ; great prudence may want vigour ; yet all are 
necessary to make a great commander. But how can a man hope 
to excel in all qualities, when some are produced by the heat, 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 229 

others by the coldness of brain and temper ? The abilities of man 
must fall short on one side or other, like too scanty a blanket 
when you are a- bed ; if you pull it upon your shoulders, you leave 
your feet bare ; if you thrust it down upon your feet, your shoul- 
ders are uncovered. 

But what would we have, unless it be other natures and beings 
than God Almighty has given us ? The height of our statures may 
be six or seven feet, and we would have it sixteen ; the length of 
our age may reach to a hundred years, and we would have it a 
thousand : we are born to grovel upon the earth, and we would 
fain soar up to the skies. We cannot comprehend the growth of a 
kernel or seed, the frame of an ant or bee ; we are amazed at the 
wisdom of the one, and industry of the other \ and yet we will 
know the substance, the figure, the courses, the influences, of all 
those glorious celestial bodies, and the end for which they were 
made : we pretend to give a clear account how thunder and 
lightning (that great artillery of God Almighty) is produced, and 
we cannot comprehend how the voice of a man is framed, that 
poor little noise we make every time we speak. The motion of 
the sun is plain and evident to some astronomers, and of the earth 
to others ; yet we none of us know which of them moves, and 
meet with many seeming impossibilities in both, and beyond the 
fathom of human reason or comprehension. Nay, we do not so 
much as know what motion is, nor how a stone moves from our 
hand, when we throw it cross the street. Of all these that most 
ancient and divine writer gives the best account in that short 
satire, "Vain man would fain be wise, when he is born like a 
wild ass's colt." 5 

But, God be thanked, his pride is greater than his ignorance ; 
and what he wants in knowledge, he supplies by sufficiency. 
When he has looked about him as far as he can, he concludes 
there is no more to be seen ; when he is at the end of his line, he 
is at the bottom of the ocean ; when he has shot his best, he is 
sure none ever did nor ever can shoot better or beyond it. His 

5 Job. xi. 12. 



230 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

own reason is the certain measure of truth, his own knowledge, 
of what is possible in nature ; though his mind and his thoughts 
change every seven years, as well as his strength and his features ; 
nay, though his opinions change every week or every day, yet he is 
sure, or at least confident, that his present thoughts and conclu- 
sions are just and true, and cannot be deceived ; and, among all 
the miseries to which mankind is born and subjected in the whole 
course of his life, he has this one felicity to comfort and support 
him, that, in all ages, in all things, every man is always in the 
right. A boy at fifteen is wiser than his father at forty, the 
meanest subject than his Prince or Governors ; and the modern 
scholars, because they have, for a hundred years past, learned 
their lesson pretty well, are much more knowing than the ancients 
their masters. 

But let it be so, and proved by good reasons, is it so by 
experience too? Have the studies, the writings, the productions 
of Gresham college, or the late academies of Paris, outshined or 
eclipsed the Lycseum of Plato, the academy of Aristotle, the Stoa 
of Zeno, the garden of Epicurus ? Has Harvey outdone Hippoc- 
rates ; or Wilkins, Archimedes ? Are D'Avila's and Strada's his- 
tories beyond those of Herodotus and Livy ? Are Sleyden's com- 
mentaries beyond those of Caesar? the flights of Boileau above 
those of Virgil? If all this must be allowed, I will then yield 
Gondibert to have excelled Homer, as is pretended ; and the 
modern French poetry, all that of the ancients. And yet, I 
think it may be as reasonably said that the plays in Moorfields arc 
beyond the Olympic games ; a Welsh or Irish harp excels those of 
Orpheus and Arion ; the pryamid in London, those of Memphis ; 
and the French conquests in Flanders are greater than those of 
Alexander and Caesar, as their operas and panegyrics would make 
us believe. 

But the consideration of poetry ought to be a subject by itself. 
For the books we have in prose, do any of the modern we con- 
verse with appear of such a spirit and force, as if they would live 
longer than the ancient have done? If our wit and eloquence, 



ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING. 231 

our knowledge or inventions, would deserve it, yet our languages 
would not : there is no hope of their lasting long, nor of anything 
in them ; they change every hundred years so as to be hardly 
known for the same, or anything of the former styles to be endured 
by the latter ; so as they can no more last like the ancients, than 
excellent carvings in wood like those in marble or brass. 

The three modern tongues most esteemed are Italian, Spanish, 
and French, all imperfect dialects of the noble Roman ; first 
mingled and corrupted with the harsh words and terminations of 
those many different and barbarous nations, by whose invasions 
and excursions the Roman empire was long infested : they were 
afterwards made up into these several languages, by long and 
popular use, out of those ruins and corruptions of Latin, and the 
prevailing languages of those nations to which these several 
provinces came in time to be most and longest subjected (as the 
Goths and Moors in Spain, the Goths and Lombards in Italy, the 
Franks in Gaul), besides a mingle of those tongues which were 
original to Gaul and to Spain before the Roman conquests and 
establishments there. Of these, there may be some remainders in 
Biscay or the Asturias : but I doubt whether there be any of the 
old Gallic in France, the subjection there having been more 
universal, both to the Romans and Franks. But I do not find the 
mountainous parts on the North of Spain were ever wholly sub- 
dued, or formerly governed, either by the Romans, Goths, or Sar- 
acens, no more than Wales by Romans, Saxons, or Normans, 
after their conquests in our island, which has preserved the ancient 
Biscayan and British more entire than any native tongue of other 
provinces, where the Roman and Gothic or Northern conquests 
reached, and were for any time established. 

It is easy to imagine how imperfect copies these modern lan- 
guages, thus composed, must needs be of so excellent an original, 
being patched up out of the conceptions, as well as sounds, of 
such barbarous or enslaved people ; whereas the Latin was framed 
or cultivated by the thoughts and uses of the noblest nation that 
appears upon any record of story, and enriched only by the spoils 



232 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 

of Greece, which alone could pretend to contest it with them. It 
is obvious enough what rapport there is, and must ever be, 
between the thoughts and words, the conceptions and languages 
of every country, and how great a difference this must make in 
the comparison and excellence of books ; and how easy and just 
a preference it must decree to those of the Greek and Latin 
before any of the modern languages. 

It may perhaps be further affirmed, in favour of the ancients, 
that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best. 
The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among those we 
call profane authors, are ^Esop's Fables and Phalaris's Epistles, 
both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and 
Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for 
the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have 
been but imitations of his original ; so I think the Epistles of 
Phalaris to have more grace, more spirit, more force of wit and 
genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. 
I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such under 
the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine ; and 
Politian, with some others, have attributed them to Lucian : but 
I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out 
this to be an original ; such diversity of passions, upon such variety 
of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of 
thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, 
such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such 
esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, 
with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never 
be represented but by him that possessed them ; and I esteem 
Lucian to have been no more capable of writing, than of acting 
what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the scholar or the 
sophist ; and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander. 6 

6 This paragraph is all that Temple says about the " Epistles of Phalaris," 
as to the genuineness of which the celebrated Bentley and Boyle controversy 
arose soon afterwards. 



XIII. 
JOHN DRYDEN. 

(1631-1700.) 

1. AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. 

[Written about 1665, revised 1684.] 

Lisideius 1 concluded in this manner; and Neander, 2 after a 
little pause, thus answered him : 

I shall grant Lisideius, without much dispute, a great part of 
what he has urged against us ; for I acknowledge that the French 
contrive their plots more regularly, and observe the laws of com- 
edy, and decorum of the stage (to speak generally), with more 
exactness than the English. Farther, I deny not but he has 
taxed us justly in some irregularities of ours which he has men- 
tioned ; yet, after all, I am of opinion, that neither our faults, nor 
their virtues, are considerable enough to place them above us. 

For the lively imitation of nature being in the definition of a 
play, those which best fulfil that law ought to be esteemed superior 
to the others. Tis true, those beauties of the French poesy are 
such as will raise perfection higher where it is, but are not suffi- 
cient to give it where it is not ; they are indeed the beauties of a 
statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of 
poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions : and this Lisi- 
deius himself, or any other, however biassed to their party, cannot 
but acknowledge, if he will either compare the humour of our 
comedies, or the characters of our serious plays, with theirs. He 

1 Sir Charles Sedley, who had exalted the French drama above the English. 

2 Dryden. 

233 



234 JOHN DR YDEN. 

who will look upon theirs which have been written till these last 
ten years, or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out 
two or three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, 
their arch-poet, what has he produced except " The Liar " ? and 
you know how it was cried up in France ; but when it came upon 
the English stage, though well translated, and that part of Dorant 
acted to so much advantage as I am confident it never received in 
its own country, the most favourable to it would not put it in com- 
petition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's. In the rest of 
Corneille's comedies you have little humour ; he tells you himself, 
his way is, first to show two lovers in good intelligence with each 
other ; in the working up of the play, to embroil them by some 
mistake, and in the latter end to clear it, and reconcile them. 

But of late years Moliere, the younger Corneille, Quinault, and 
some others, have been imitating afar off the quick turns and 
graces of the English stage. They have mixed their serious plays 
with mirth, like our tragi-comedies, since the death of Cardinal 
Richelieu, which Lisideius, and many others, not observing, have 
commended that in them for a virtue, which they themselves no 
longer practise. Most of their new plays are, like some of ours, 
derived from the Spanish novels. There is scarce one of them 
without a veil, and a trusty Diego, who drolls much after the rate 
of the "Adventures." 3 But their humours, if I may grace them 
with that name, are so thin sown, that never above one of them 
comes up in any play. I dare take upon me to find more variety 
of them in some one play of Ben Jonson's, than in all theirs to- 
gether : as he who has seen the " Alchemist," " The Silent Woman," 
or " Bartholomew Fair," cannot but acknowledge with me. 

I grant the French have performed what was possible on the 
ground-work of the Spanish plays ; what was pleasant before, 
they have made regular : but there is not above one good play to 
be writ on all those plots ; they are too much alike to please often, 

3 "'The Adventures of Five Hours,' a comedy imitated from the Spanish of 
Calderon, by Sir Samuel Tuke, with some assistance from the Earl of Bristol." 
— SCOTT. 



AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. 235 

which we need not the experience of our own stage to justify. 
As for their new way of mingling mirth with serious plot, I do not, 
with Lisideius, condemn the thing, though I cannot approve their 
manner of doing it. He tells us, we cannot so speedily recollect 
ourselves after a scene of great passion and concernment, as to 
pass to another of mirth and humour, and to enjoy it with any 
relish : but why should he imagine the soul of man more heavy than 
his senses ? Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant object to 
a pleasant, in a much shorter time than is required to this ? and 
does not the unpleasantness of the first commend the beauty of 
the latter? The old rule of logic might have convinced him that 
contraries, when placed near, set off each other. A continued 
gravity keeps the spirit too much bent ; we must refresh it some- 
times, as we bait in a journey, that we may go on with greater 
ease. A scene of mirth, mixed with tragedy, has the same effect 
upon us which our music has betwixt the acts ; which we find a 
relief to us from the best plots and language of the stage, if the 
discourses have been long. I must therefore have stronger argu- 
ments ere I am convinced that compassion and mirth in the same 
subject destroy each other ; and in the mean time, cannot but 
conclude, to the honour of our nation, that we have invented, 
increased, and perfected, a more pleasant way of writing for the 
stage, than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any 
nation, which is tragi-comedy. 

And this leads me to wonder why Lisideius and many others 
should cry up the barrenness of the French plots above the variety 
and copiousness of the English. Their plots are single \ they carry 
on one design, which is pushed forward by all the actors, every 
scene in the play contributing and moving towards it. Our plays, 
besides the main design, have under-plots, or by-concernments, of 
less considerable persons and intrigues, which are carried on with 
the motion of the main plot : as they say the orb of the fixed 
stars, and those of the planets, though they have motions of their 
own, are whirled about by the motion of the primum mobile* in 

4 The sphere in which the planets were conceived to be set. 



236 JOHN DRYDEN. 

which they are contained. That similitude expresses much of the 
English stage ; for if contrary motions may be found in nature to 
agree ; if a planet can go east and west at the same time ; — one 
way by virtue of his own motion, the other by the force of the 
first mover ; — it will not be difficult to imagine how the under-plot, 
which is only different, not contrary to the great design, may nat- 
urally be conducted along with it. Eugenius 5 has already shewn 
us, from the confession of the French poets, that the unity of 
action is sufficiently preserved, if all the imperfect actions of the 
play are conducting to the main design; but when those petty 
intrigues of a play are so ill-ordered that they have no coherence 
with the other, I must grant that Lisideius has reason to tax that 
want of due connexion ; for co-ordination in a play is as danger- 
ous and unnatural as in a state. In the mean time he must 
acknowledge, our variety, if well ordered, will afford a greater 
pleasure to the audience. 

As for his other argument, that by pursuing one single theme, 
they gain an advantage to express and work up the passions, I 
wish any example he can bring from them would make it good ; 
for I confess their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read. 
Neither, indeed, is it possible for them, in the way they take, so 
to express passion, as that the effects of it should appear in the 
concernment of an audience, their speeches being so many decla- 
mations, which tire us with the length ; so that, instead of per- 
suading us to grieve for their imaginary heroes, we are concerned 
for our own trouble, as we are in tedious visits of bad company ; 
we are in pain till they are gone. When the French stage came 
to be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were 
introduced, to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look 
upon the " Cinna " and the " Pompey " ; they are not so properly 
to be called plays, as long discourses of reasons of state ; and 
" Polieucte " in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops 
upon our organs. Since that time it is grown into a custom, and 

5 Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset. 



AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. 237 

their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons ; 6 nay, they 
account it the grace of their parts, and think themselves dispar- 
aged by the poet, if they may not twice or thrice in a play enter- 
tain the audience with a speech of an hundred lines. I deny not 
but this may suit well enough with the French ; for as we, who 
are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so 
they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make 
themselves more serious : and this I conceive to be one reason 
why comedies are more pleasing to us, and tragedies to them. 
But to speak generally : It cannot be denied that short speeches 
and replies are more apt to move the passions, and beget concern^ 
ment in us, than the other ; for it is unnatural for any one, in a 
gust of passion, to speak long together; or for another, in the 
same condition, to suffer him without interruption. Grief and 
passion are like floods raised in little brooks by a sudden rain ; 
they are quickly up, and if the concernment be poured unex- 
pectedly in upon us, it overflows us : But a long sober shower 
gives them leisure to run out as they came in, without troubling 
the ordinary current. As for comedy, repartee is one of its chief- 
est graces ; the greatest pleasure of the audience is a chase of wit, 
kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed. And this our fore- 
fathers, if not we, have had in Fletcher's plays to a much higher 
degree of perfection than the French poets can reasonably hope 
to reach. 

There is another part of Lisideius's discourse, in which he has 
rather excused our neighbours, than commended them ; that is, 
for aiming only to make one person considerable in their plays. 
It is very true what he has urged, that one character in all plays, 
even without the poet's care, will have advantage of all the others ; 
and that the design of the whole drama will chiefly depend on it. 
But this hinders not that there may be more shining characters 
in the play : many persons of a second magnitude, nay, some so 

6 "The custom of placing an hour-glass before the clergyman was then 
common in England. It is still the furniture of a country pulpit in Scotland." 
— Scott. 



238 JOHN DRYDEX. 

very near, so almost equal to the first, that greatness may be 
opposed to greatness, and all the persons be made considerable, 
not only by their quality, but their action. It is evident, that the 
more the persons are, the greater will be the variety of the plot. 
If then the parts are managed so regularly that the beauty of the 
whole be kept entire, and that the variety become not a perplexed 
and confused mass of accidents, you will find it infinitely more 
pleasing to be led in a labyrinth of design, where you see some of 
your way before you, yet discern not the end till you arrive at it. 
And that all this is practicable, I can produce for examples many 
of our English plays \ as " The Maid's Tragedy," " The Alchem- 
ist," "The Silent Woman": I was going to have named "The 
Fox," but that the unity of design seems not exactly observed 
in it ; for there appear two actions in the play ; the first naturally 
ending with the fourth act, the second forced from it in the fifth : 
which yet is the less to be condemned in him, because the dis- 
guise of Volpone, though it suited not with his character as a 
crafty or covetous person, agreed well enough with that of a 
voluptuary ; and by it the poet gained the end at which he aimed, 
the punishment of vice, and the reward of virtue, both which that 
disguise produced. So that to judge equally of it, it was an 
excellent fifth act, but not so naturally proceeding from the 
former. 

But to leave this, and pass to the latter part of Lisideius's dis- 
course, which concerns relations, I must acknowledge with him, 
that the French have reasons to hide that part of the action which 
would occasion too much tumult on the stage, and to chuse rather 
to have it made known by narration to the audience. Farther, I 
think it very convenient, for the reasons he has given, that all 
incredible actions were removed ; but, whether custom has so in- 
sinuated itself into our countrymen, or nature has so formed them 
to fierceness, I know not ; but they will scarcely suffer combats 
and other objects of horror to be taken from them. And indeed, 
the indecency of tumults is all which can be objected against fight- 
ing : for why may not our imagination as well suffer itself to be 



AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. 239 

deluded with the probability of it, as with any other thing in the 
play? For my part, I can with as great ease persuade myself 
that the blows are given in good earnest, as I can that they who 
strike them are kings or princes, or those persons which they 
represent. For objects of incredibility, — I would be satisfied 
from Lisideius, whether we have any so removed from all appear- 
ance of truth, as are those of Corneille's " Andromede " ; a play 
which has been frequented the most of any he has writ. If the 
Perseus, or the son of an heathen god, the Pegasus, and the 
Monster, were not capable to choke a strong belief, let him blame 
any representation of ours hereafter. Those indeed were objects 
of delight, yet the reason is the same as to the probability ; for he 
makes it not a ballet, or masque, but a play, which is to resemble 
truth. But for death, that it ought not to be represented, I have, 
besides the arguments alleged by Lisideius, the authority of Ben 
Jonson, who has forborne it in his tragedies : for both the death 
of Sejanus and Catiline are related ; though, in the latter, I can- 
not but observe one irregularity of that great poet ; he has re- 
moved the scene in the same act from Rome to Catiline's army, 
and from thence again to Rome ; and besides, has allowed a very 
considerable time after Catiline's speech for the striking of the 
battle, and the return of Petreius, who is to relate the event of it 
to the senate ; which I should not animadvert on him, who was 
otherwise a painful observer of to irpe-n-ov, or the decorum of the 
stage, if he had not used extreme severity in his judgment on the 
incomparable Shakespeare for the same fault. 7 To conclude on 
this subject of relations, if we are to be blamed for shewing too 
much of the action, the French are as faulty for discovering too 
little of it ; a mean betwixt both should be observed by every 
judicious writer, so as the audience may neither be left unsatisfied 
by not seeing what is beautiful, or shocked by beholding what is 
either incredible or indecent. 

I hope I have already proved in this discourse, that though we 
are not altogether so punctual as the French in observing the laws 

7 Scott refers to Jonson's Prologue to " Every Man in his Humour." 



240 JOHN DRYDEN. 

of comedy, yet our errors are so few, and little, and those things 
wherein we excel them so considerable, that we ought of right to 
be preferred before them. But what will Lisideius say, if they 
themselves acknowledge they are too strictly bounded by those 
laws, for breaking which he has blamed the English ? I will allege 
Corneille's words, as I find them in the end of his Discourse of 
the Three Unities : 77 est facile aux speculatifs d' estre severes, &c. 
" It is easy for speculative persons to judge severely ; but if they 
would produce to public view ten or twelve pieces of this nature, 
they would perhaps give more latitude to the rules than I have 
done, when, by experience, they had known how much we are 
limited and constrained by them, and how many beauties of the 
stage they banished from it." To illustrate a little what he has 
said : — by their servile observations of the unities of time and 
place, and integrity of scenes, they have brought on themselves 
that dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination which may be 
observed in all their plays. How many beautiful accidents might 
naturally happen in two or three days, which cannot arrive 8 with 
any probability in the compass of twenty-four hours? There is 
time to be allowed also for maturity of design, which amongst 
great and prudent persons, such as are often represented in trag- 
edy, cannot, with any likelihood of truth, be brought to pass at so 
short a warning. Farther, by tying themselves strictly to the unity 
of place, and unbroken scenes, they are forced many times to omit 
some beauties which cannot be shewn where the act began ; but 
might, if the scene were interrupted, and the stage cleared for the 
persons to enter in another place ; and therefore the French poets 
are often forced upon absurdities : for if the act begins in a 
chamber, all the persons in the play must have some business or 
other to come thither, or else they are not to be shewn that act ; 
and sometimes their characters are very unfitting to appear there : 
as suppose it were the king's bed-chamber, yet the meanest man 
in the tragedy must come and dispatch his business there, rather 
than in the lobby, or court-yard (which is fitter for him), for fear 
8 happen; imitation of French usage. 



AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. 241 

the stage should be cleared, and the scenes broken. Many times 
they fall by it into a greater inconvenience ; for they keep their 
scenes unbroken, and yet change the place ; as in one of their 
newest plays, where the act begins in the street. There a gentle- 
man is to meet his friend ; he sees him with his man coming out 
from his father's house ; they talk together, and the first goes out : 
the second, who is a lover, has made an appointment with his 
mistress ; she appears at the window, and then we are to imagine 
the scene lies under it. This gentleman is called away, and 
leaves his servant with his mistress : presently her father is heard 
from within ; the young lady is afraid the serving-man should be 
discovered, and thrusts him into a place of safety, which is sup- 
posed to be her closet. After this, the father enters to the daugh- 
ter, and now the scene is in a house : for he is seeking from one 
room to another for this poor Philipin, or French Diego, who is 
heard from within, drolling and breaking many a miserable conceit 
on the subject of his sad condition. In this ridiculous manner 
the play goes forward, the stage being never empty the while : so 
that the street, the window, the two houses, and the closet, are 
made to walk about, and the persons to stand still. Now, what, I 
beseech you, is more easy than to write a regular French play, or 
more difficult than to write an irregular English one, like those of 
Fletcher, or of Shakespeare ? 

If they content themselves, as Corneille did, with some flat 
design, which, like an ill riddle, is found out ere it be half pro- 
posed, such plots we can make every way regular as easily as they ; 
but whenever they endeavour to rise to any quick turns and 
counter-turns of plot, as some of them have attempted, since 
Corneille's plays have been less in vogue, you see they write as 
irregularly as we, though they cover it more speciously. Hence 
the reason is perspicuous why no French plays, when translated, 
have, 9 or ever can succeed on the English stage. For, if you 
consider the plots, our own are fuller of variety ; if the writing, 
ours are more quick and fuller of spirit ; and therefore 'tis a 

9 Common modern blunder of omitting past participle with auxiliary. 



242 JOHN DRYDEN. 

strange mistake in those who decry the way of writing plays in 
verse, as if the English therein imitated the French. We have 
borrowed nothing from them ; our plots are weaved in English 
looms : we endeavour therein to follow the variety and greatness 
of characters, which are derived to us from Shakespeare and 
Fletcher; the copiousness and well-knitting of the intrigues we 
have from Jonson ; and for the verse itself we have English pre- 
cedents of elder date than any of Corneille's plays. Not to 
name our old comedies before Shakespeare, which were all writ in 
verse of six feet, or Alexandrines, such as the French now use, 10 
I can shew in Shakespeare, many scenes of rhyme together, and 
the like in Ben Jonson's tragedies : in " Catiline " and " Sejanus " 
sometimes thirty or forty lines, — I mean besides the chorus, or 
the monologues ; which, by the way, shewed Ben no enemy to 
this way of writing, especially if you read his " Sad Shepherd," 
which goes sometimes on rhyme, sometimes on blank verse, like 
an horse who eases himself on trot and amble. You find him 
likewise commending Fletcher's pastoral of " The Faithful Shep- 
herdess," which is for the most part rhyme, though not refined to 
that purity to which it hath since been brought. And these exam- 
ples are enough to clear us from a servile imitation of the French. 
But to return whence I have digressed : I dare boldly affirm 
these two things of the English drama ; — First, that we have 
many plays of ours as regular as any of theirs, and which, besides, 
have more variety of plot and characters \ and, secondly, that in 
most of the irregular plays of Shakespeare or Fletcher (for Ben 
Jonson's are for the most part regular), there is a more masculine 
fancy, and greater spirit in the writing than there is in any of the 
French. I could produce, even in Shakespeare's and Fletcher's 
works, some plays which are almost exactly formed ; as the 
"Merry Wives of Windsor," and "The Scornful Lady": but, 
because (generally speaking) Shakespeare, who writ first, did not 

10 " Mr. Malone remarks that the assertion in the text is too general," — 
(Scott), which is a very just remark, for all the older plays were not written 
in Alexandrines. Cf. Arnold's note. 



AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. 243 

perfectly observe the laws of comedy, and Fletcher, who came 
nearer to perfection, yet through carelessness made many faults ; I 
will take the pattern of a perfect play from Ben Jonson, who was a 
careful and learned observer of the dramatic laws, and from all his 
comedies I shall select " The Silent Woman," of which I will make 
a short examen, according to those rules which the French observe. 
As Neander was beginning to examine " The Silent Woman," 
Eugenius, earnestly regarding him ; I beseech you, Neander, said 
he, gratify the company, and me in particular, so far as, before 
you speak of the play, to give us a character of the author ; and 
tell us frankly your opinion, whether you do not think all writers, 
both French and English, ought to give place to him? 

I fear, replied Neander, that, in obeying your commands, I 
shall draw some envy on myself. Besides, in performing them, it 
will be first necessary to speak somewhat of Shakespeare and 
Fletcher, his rivals in poesy ; and one of them, in my opinion, at 
least his equal, perhaps his superior. 11 

To begin then with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all 
modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most 
comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present 
to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he 
describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those 
who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater 
commendation : he was naturally learned ; he needed not the 
spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and 
found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike ; were he 
so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of 
mankind. He is many times flat, insipid ; his comic wit degener- 
ating into clenches, 12 his serious swelling into bombast. But he 
is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him : 
no man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not 
then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, 

II " Mr. Malone justly observes that the caution observed in this decision 
proves the miserable taste of the age." — Scott. 



244 JOHN DRYDEX. 

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi?-* 

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that 
there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would 
produce it much better done in Shakespeare ; and however others 
are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he 
lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, 
never equalled them to him in their esteem : and in the last king's 
court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, 
and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shake- 
speare far above him. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, 
with the advantage of Shakespeare's wit, which was their pre- 
cedent, great natural gifts improved by study; Beaumont espe- 
cially being so accurate a judge of plays that Ben Jonson, while he 
lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis thought, 
used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. 
What value he had for him, appears by the verses he writ to him; 
and therefore I need speak no farther of it. The first play that 
brought Fletcher and him in esteem, was their " Philaster " ; for 
before that, they had written two or three very unsuccessfully : as 
the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ " Every Man in 
his Humour." Their plots were generally more regular than 
Shakespeare's, especially those which were made before Beau- 
mont's death ; and they understood and imitated the conversation 
of gentlemen much better ; whose wild debaucheries, and quick- 
ness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as they 
have done. Humour, 14 which Ben Jonson derived from particular 
persons, they made it not their business to describe : they repre- 
sented all the passions very lively, but above all, love. I am apt 
to believe the English language in them arrived to its highest 
perfection ; what words have since been taken in, are rather 
superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most 

13 As the cypresses are among the pliant shrubs. — Virgil, Eclogues, I. 26. 

14 " Humour, in the ancient dramatic language, signified some peculiar or 
fantastic bias, or habit of mind, in an individual." — Scott. 



AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY. 245 

pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage; two of theirs 
being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Jonson's : 
the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, 
and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with 
all men's humours. Shakespeare's language is likewise a little 
obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs. 

As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look 
upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his 
dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which 
any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as 
well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he 
was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. 
Wit and language, and humour also in some measure, we had 
before him ; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he 
came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any 
who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of 
his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions ; his genius was 
too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he 
knew he came after those who had performed both to such an 
height. Humour was his proper sphere ; and in that he delighted 
most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant 
in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly 
from them : there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman 
authors of those times, whom he has not translated in " Sejanus " 
and "Catiline." But he has done his robberies so openly, that 
one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades 
authors like a monarch ; and what would be theft in other poets, 
is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so 
represents old Rome to us, in its rights, ceremonies, and customs, 
that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we 
had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his 
language, it was that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in 
his comedies especially : perhaps too, he did a little too much 
Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated 
almost as much Latin as he found them : wherein, though he 



246 JOHN DRYDEN 

learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with 
the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakespeare, I 
must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare 
the greater wit. 15 Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our 
dramatic poets ; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate 
writing : I admire him, but I love Shakespeare. To conclude of 
him ; as he has given us the most correct plays, so in the precepts 
which he has laid down in his " Discoveries," 16 we have as many 
and profitable rules for perfecting the stage, as any wherewith the 
French can furnish us. 

Having thus spoken of the author, I proceed to the examina- 
tion of his comedy, "The Silent Woman." 

is « Dryden here understands wit in the enlarged sense of invention or 
genius." — Scott. 

16 Mr. Thomas Arnold, who has just published in the Clarendon Press 
Series a useful edition of this Essay of Dryden's, says, in a note on the 
"Discoveries": "The praise which Dryden gives to the book is excessive." 
I cannot think so, and in confirmation of this view, I would refer to an excel- 
lent article on the " Discoveries," by the poet Swinburne, in the Fortnightly 
Review for July, 1888, and to his" Study of Ben Jonson." Mr. Saintsbury also 
shows a high appreciation of Jonson's prose style, in his " History of Eliza- 
bethan Literature" (pp. 218-220). 



XIII. 

2. DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE, OR AN ESSAY ON 
THE DRAMATIC POETRY OF THE LAST AGE. 

[Written about 1670.] 

The promises of authors, that they will write again, are, in 
effect, a threatening of their readers with some new imperti- 
nence ; and they, who perform not what they promise, will have 
their pardon on easy terms. It is from this consideration, that I 
could be glad to spare you the trouble, which I am now giving you, 
of a postscript, if I were not obliged, by many reasons, to write 
somewhat concerning our present plays, and those of our prede- 
cessors on the English stage. The truth is, I have so far engaged 
myself in a bold epilogue to this play, wherein I have somewhat 
taxed the former writing, that it was necessary for me either not 
to print it, or to shew that I could defend it. Yet I would so 
maintain my opinion of the present age, as not to be wanting in 
my veneration for the past : I would ascribe to dead authors their 
just praises in those things wherein they have excelled us ; and in 
those wherein we contend with them for the pre-eminence, I 
would acknowledge our advantages to the age, and claim no vic- 
tory from our wit. This being what I have proposed to myself, I 
hope I shall not be thought arrogant when I inquire into their 
errors ; for we live in an age so sceptical that, as it determines 
little, so it takes nothing from antiquity on trust ; and I profess to 
have no other ambition in this essay than that poetry may not go 
backward, when all other arts and sciences are advancing. Who- 
ever censures me for this inquiry, let him hear his character from 
Horace : 

247 



248 JOHN DRY DEN. 

Ingeniis non ille favet, plauditque sepultis, 
Nostra sed impugnat ; nos nostraque lividus odil, 11 

He favours not dead wits but hates the living. 

It was upbraided to that excellent poet, that he was an enemy to 
the writings of his predecessor Lucilius, because he said, Lu- 
cilium lutulentum fluere}* that he ran muddy ; and that he ought 
to have retrenched from his satires many unnecessary verses. But 
Horace makes Lucilius himself to justify him from the imputation 
of envy, by telling you that he would have done the same, had he 
lived in an age which was more refined : 

Si for et hoc nostrum fato delapsus \_dilatus~\ in cevum, 
Detereret sibi multa, redder et omne quod ultra 
Perfectum traherelur, 19 &c. 

And, both in the whole course of that satire, and in his most admira- 
ble Epistle to Augustus, he makes it his business to prove that antiq- 
uity alone is no plea for the excellency of a poem ; but that, one 
age learning from another, the last (if we can suppose an equality 
of wit in the writers), has the advantage of knowing more and 
better than the former. And this, I think, is the state of the 
question in dispute. It is therefore my part to make it clear that 
the language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and 
refined above the last ; and then it will not be difficult to infer 
that our plays have received some part of those advantages. 

In the first place, therefore, it will be necessary to state in gen- 
eral, what this refinement is, of which we treat ; and that, I think, 
will not be defined amiss, " An improvement of our Wit, Language, 
and Conversation : or, an alteration in them for the better." 

To begin with Language. That an alteration is lately made in 

17 He does not favor and applaud buried wits, but attacks our own; envious, 
he hates lis and our wits. — Horace, Epistles, II. I. 88-89. 

18 Horace, Satires, I. 4. 11, and I. 10. 58. 

19 If he had been brought down by fate to this age of ours, he would erase 
much from his works, he woidd cut out everything that was carried beyond 
completion. — Horace, Satires, I. 10. 76-78. 



DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE. 249 

ours, or since the writers of the last age (in which I comprehend 
Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson), is manifest. Any man who 
reads those excellent poets, and compares their language with what 
is now written, will see it almost in every line ; but that this is an 
improvement of the language, or an alteration for the better, will 
not so easily be granted. For many are of a contrary opinion, 
that the English tongue was then in the height of its perfection ; 
that from Jonson's time to ours it has been in a continual declina- 
tion, like that of the Romans from the age of Virgil to Statius, 
and so downward to Claudian ; of which, not only Petronius, but 
Quintilian himself so much complains, under the person of Se- 
cundus, in his famous dialogue, De Causis corruptee Eloquential 

But, to show that our language is improved and that those 
people have not a just value for the age in which they live, let us 
consider in what the refinement of a language principally consists ; 
that is, " either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, which are 
ill sounding, or improper ; or in admitting new, which are more 
proper, more sounding, and more significant." 

The reader will easily take notice, that when I speak of reject- 
ing improper words and phrases, I mention not such as are 
antiquated by custom only, and, as I may say, without any fault of 
theirs. For in this case the refinement can but be accidental; 
that is, when the words and phrases, which are rejected, happen 
to be improper. Neither would I be understood, when I speak 
of impropriety of language, either wholly to accuse the last age, or 
to excuse the present, and least of all myself; for all writers have 
their imperfections and failings ; but I may safely conclude in the 
general, that our improprieties are less frequent, and less gross 
than theirs. One testimony of this is undeniable, that we are the 
first who have observed them ; and, certainly, to observe errors is 
a great step to the correcting of them. But, malice and partiality 
set apart, let any man who understands English, read diligently 
the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that 
he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some 
20 On the causes of the corruption of Eloquence. 



250 JOHN DRYDEX. 

notorious flaw in sense ; and yet these men are reverenced, when 
we are not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times 
their expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. 

A T eque ego Mis detrahere ausim 
Ihcrentem capiti multa cum laude coronam. 21 

But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, 
if not in its infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and 
maturity. Witness the lameness of their plots ; many of which, 
especially those which they writ first (for even that age refined 
itself in some measure), were made up of some ridiculous incohe- 
rent story, which in one play many times took up the business of 
an age. I suppose I need not name " Pericles, Prince of Tyre," 
nor the historical plays of Shakespeare ; besides many of the rest, 
as the " Winter's Tale,' r " Love's Labour Lost," " Measure for 
Measure," which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at 
least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, 
nor the serious part your concernment. If I would expatiate on 
this subject, I could easily demonstrate that our admired Fletcher, 
who wrote after him, neither understood correct plotting, nor that 
which they call " the decorum of the stage." I would not search 
in his worst plays for examples. He who will consider his " Phil- 
aster," his " Humorous Lieutenant," his "Faithful Shepherdess," 
and many others which I could name, will find them much below 
the applause which is now given them. He will see Philaster 
wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself; 
not to mention the Clown, who enters immediately, and not only 
has the advantage of the combat against the hero, but diverts you 
from your serious concernment, with his ridiculous and absurd 
raillery. In his " Humorous Lieutenant," you find his Demetrius 
and Leontius staying in the midst of a routed army, to hear the 
cold mirth of the Lieutenant ; and Demetrius afterwards appear- 

21 Nor may I dare to take away from them a crown placed on their broivs 
with great praise. — Horace, Satires, I. io. 56-57. Read cum multd for 
mult4 cum. 



DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE. 251 

ing with a pistol in his hand, in the next age to Alexander the 
( rieat. 22 And for his Shepherd, he falls twice into the former in- 
decency of wounding women. But these absurdities, which those 
poets committed, may more properly be called the age's fault than 
theirs. For, besides the want of education and learning (which 
was their particular unhappiness) , they wanted the benefit of con- 
verse : But of that I shall speak hereafter, in a place more proper 
for it. Their audiences knew no better, and therefore were satis- 
fied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the golden 
age of poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then 
content with acorns before they knew the use of bread ; or that 
"A At? S/ovos 23 was become a proverb. They had many who 
admired them, and few who blamed them ; and certainly a severe 
critic is the greatest help to a good wit : he does the office of a 
friend, while he designs that of an enemy ; and his malice keeps a 
poet within those bounds, which the luxuriancy of his fancy would 
tempt him to overleap. 

But it is not their plots which I meant principally to tax ; I was 
speaking of their sense and language ; and I dare almost challenge 
any man to shew me a page together which is correct in both. 
As for Ben Jonson, I am loth to name him, because he is a most 
judicious writer ; yet he very often falls into these errors ; and I 
once more beg the reader's pardon for accusing him of them. 
Only let him consider that I live in an age where my least faults 
are severely censured ; and that I have no way left to extenuate 
my failings, but by shewing as great in those whom we admire : 
C<vdimus, inque vicem preebemus crura sagittis?* 

I cast my eyes but by chance on " Catiline " ; and in the three or 
four last pages, found enough to conclude that Jonson writ not 
correctly. 

22 " In these criticisms we see the effects of the refinement which our stage 
had now borrowed from the French." — Scott. 

23 Enough of 'the oak. 

24 jy e strike, and in turn we present our limbs to strokes. — Persius, Satires, 
IV. 42. 



252 JOHN DRYDEN. 

" Let the long-hid seeds 
Of treason, in thee, now shoot forth in deeds 
Ranker than horror." 

In reading some bombastic speeches of Macbeth, which are not 
to be understood, he used to say that it was horror ; and I am 
much afraid that this is so. 

" Thy parricide late on thy only son, 
After his mother, to make empty way 
For thy last wicked nuptials, worse than they 
That blaze that act of thy incestuous life, 
Which gain'd thee at once a daughter and a wife." 

The sense is here extremely perplexed ; and I doubt the word 

they is false grammar. 

" And be free 
Not heaven itself from thy impiety." 

A synch ysis, 25 or ill-placing of words, of which Tully so much 
complains in oratory. 

" The waves and dens of beasts could not receive 
The bodies that those souls were frighted from." 

The preposition in the end of the sentence ; a common fault 
with him, and which I have but lately observed in my own writings. 

" What all the several ills that visit earth, 
Plague, famine, fire, could not reach unto, 
The sword, nor surfeits, let thy fury do." 

Here are both the former faults ; for, besides that the preposi- 
tion unto is placed last in the verse, and at the half period, and is 
redundant, there is the former synchysis in the words " the sword, 
nor surfeits," which in construction ought to have been placed 
before the other. 

Catiline says of Cethegus, that for his sake he would 

" Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest 
The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire 
At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire" 

25 confusion. 



DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE. 253 

To " go on upon," is only to go on twice. To " give fire at face 
of a full cloud," was not understood in his own time ; " and stand 
his ire" besides the antiquated word ire, there is the article his, 
which makes false construction : and giving fire at the face of a 
cloud, is a perfect image of shooting, however it came to be known 
in those days to Catiline. 

" Others there are, 
Whom envy to the state draws and pulls on, 
For contumelies received; and such are sure ones." 

Ones, in the plural number : but that is frequent with him ; for 
he says, not long after, 

" Csesar and Crassus, if they be ill men, 
Are mighty ones. 
Such men, they do not succour more the cause, &c." 

They redundant. 

" Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once, 
We should stand upright and unfear'd." 

His is ill syntax with heaven \ and by unf eared he means un- 
afraid : Words of a quite contrary signification. 

"The ports are open." Ke perpetually uses ports for gates; 
which is an affected error in him, to introduce Latin by the loss of 
the English idiom ; as, in the translation of Tully's speeches, he 
usually does. 

Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was 
not known till Mr. Waller introduced it ; and, therefore, it is not to 
be wondered if Ben Jonson has many such lines as these : — 

"But being bred up in his father's needy fortunes; brought up in's sister's 
prostitution," &c. x 

But meanness of expression one would think not to be his error 
in a tragedy, which ought to be more high and sounding than any 
other kind of poetry ; and yet amongst others, in " Catiline," I 
find these four lines together : — 



254 JOHN DRYDEN. 

" So Asia, thou art cruelly even 
With us, for all the blows thee given; 
When we, whose virtues conquered thee, 
Thus by thy vices ruin'd be." 

Be there is false English for are ; though the rhyme hides it. 

But I am willing to close the book, partly out of veneration 
to the author, partly out of weariness to pursue an argument which 
is so fruitful in so small a compass. And what correctness, after 
this, can be expected from Shakespeare, or from Fletcher, who 
wanted that learning and care which Jonson had ? I will, there- 
fore, spare my own trouble of inquiring into their faults ; who, had 
they lived now, had doubtless written more correctly. I suppose 
it will be enough for me to affirm (as I think I safely may) , that 
these, and the like errors, which I taxed in the most correct of the 
last age are such into which we do not ordinarily fall. I think 
few of our present writers would have left behind them such a 
line as this : — 

"Contain your spirit in more stricter bounds." 

But that gross way of two comparatives was then ordinary ; and, 
therefore, more pardonable in Jonson. 

As for the other part of refining, which consists in receiving new 
words and phrases, I shall not insist much on it. It is obvious 
that we have admitted many, some of which we wanted, and 
therefore our language is the richer for them, as it would be by 
importation of bullion : Others are rather ornamental than neces- 
sary; yet, by their admission, the language is become more 
courtly, and our thoughts are better drest. These are to be found 
scattered in the writings of our age, and it is not my business to 
collect them. They who have lately written with most care, have, 
I believe, taken the rule of Horace for their guide ; that is, not to 
be too hasty in receiving of words, but rather stay till custom has 
made them familiar to us. 

Quern penes arbitrium est, et jus, et -norma loquenJiP*' 

26 j n w hose power is the control and law and rule of speech. — HORACE, Ars 
Poetic a, 72. 



DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE. 25$ 

For I cannot approve of their way of refining, who corrupt our 
English idiom by mixing it too much with French : That is a 
sophistication of language, not an improvement of it ; a turning 
English into French, rather than a refining of English by French. 
We meet daily with those fops, who value themselves on their 
travelling, and pretend they cannot express their meaning in 
English, because they would put off to us some French phrase of 
the last edition ; without considering that, for aught they know, 
we have a better of our own. But these are not the men who are 
to refine us ; their talent is to prescribe fashions, not words : at 
best, they are only serviceable to a writer, so as Ennius was to 
Virgil. He may ait rum ex stercore colligere : 27 For it is hard if, 
amongst many insignificant phrases, there happen not something 
worth preserving ; though they themselves, like Indians, know not 
the value of their own commodity. 

There is yet another way of improving language, which poets 
especially have practised in all ages ; that is, by applying received 
words to a new signification ; and this, I believe, is meant by 
Horace, in that precept which is so variously construed by 

expositors : 

Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum 
Reddiderit junctura novum. 2 * 

And, in this way, he himself had a particular happiness ; using 
all the tropes, and particular metaphors, with that grace which is 
observable in his Odes, where the beauty of expression is often 
greater than that of thought ; as, in that one example, amongst an 
infinite number of others, " Et vultus nimium lubricus aspici." 29 

And therefore, though he innovated a little, he may justly be 
called a great refiner of the Roman tongue. This choice of 
words, and heightening of their natural signification, was observed 

27 collect gold from refuse. 

28 You will have spoken well, if a skilful conjunction has made a known 
word new. — Horace, Ars Poetica, 47-48. 

29 And a countenance too dangerous [lit. slippery] to look at. — Horace, 
Odes, I. 19. 8. 



256 JOHN DRYDEN. 

in him by the writers of the following ages ; for Petronius says of 
him, " Et Horatii curiosa felicitas." 30 By this grafting, as I may 
call it, on old words, has our tongue been beautified by the 
three before-mentioned poets, Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson, 
whose excellencies I can never enough admire ; and in this they 
have been followed, especially by Sir John Suckling and Mr. 
Waller, who refined upon them. Neither have they who suc- 
ceeded them been wanting in their endeavours to adorn our 
mother tongue : But it is not so lawful for me to praise my living 
contemporaries, as to admire my dead predecessors. 

I should now speak of the refinement of Wit ; but I have been 
so large on the former subject, that I am forced to contract my- 
self in this. I will therefore only observe to you that the wit of 
the last age was yet more incorrect than their language. Shake- 
speare, who many times has written better than any poet in any 
language, is yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing that 
wit according to the dignity of the subject, that he writes, in many 
places, below the dullest writers of ours, or any precedent age. 
Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of 
thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He is the very 
Janus of poets ; he wears almost everywhere two faces ; and you 
have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other. 
Neither is the luxuriance of Fletcher, which his friends have taxed 
in him, a less fault than the carelessness of Shakespeare. He does 
not well always ; and, when he does, he is a true Englishman — 
he knows not when to give over. If he wakes in one scene, he 
commonly slumbers in another ; and, if he pleases you in the first 
three acts, he is frequently so tired with his labour that he goes 
heavily in the fourth, and sinks under his burden in the fifth. 

For Ben Jonson, the most judicious of poets, he always writ 
properly, and as the character required ; and I will not contest 
farther with my friends, who call that wit : it being very certain 
that even folly itself, well represented, is wit in a larger significa- 
tion ; and that there is fancy, as well as judgment, in it, though not 

30 And the careful aptness of Horace. — PETRONIUS, 1 1 8. 5. 



DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE. 257 

so much or noble : because all poetry being imitation, that of folly 
is a lower exercise of fancy, though perhaps as difficult as the 
other \ for it is a kind of looking downward in the poet, and repre- 
senting that part of mankind which is below him. 

In these low characters of vice and folly, lay the excellency of 
that inimitable writer ; who, when at any time he aimed at wit in 
the strictest sense, that is, sharpness of conceit, was forced either 
to borrow from the ancients, as to my knowledge he did very much 
from Plautus ; or, when he trusted himself alone, often fell into 
meanness of expression. Nay, he was not free from the lowest and 
most grovelling kind of wit, which we call clenches, 31 of which 
" Every Man in his Humour " is infinitely full ; and, which is worse, 
the wittiest persons in the drama speak them. His other comedies 
are not exempt from them. Will you give me leave to name 
some few? Asper, in which character he personates himself (and 
he neither was nor thought himself a fool) , exclaiming against the 
ignorant judges of the age, speaks thus : 

" How monstrous and detested is't, to see 
A fellow that has neither art nor brain, 
Sit like an Aristarchus, or stark-ass, 
Taking men's lives, with a tobacco face, 
In snuff," &c. 

And presently after : " I marvel whose wit 'twas to put a prologue 
in yond Sackbut's mouth. They might well think he would be 
out of tune, and yet you'd play upon him too." — Will you have 
another of the same stamp ? " O, I cannot abide these limbs of 
sattin, or rather Satan." 

But, it may be, you will object that this was Asper, Macilente, 
or Carlo Buffone ; you shall, therefore, hear him speak in his own 
person, and that in the two last lines, or sting of an epigram. It 
is inscribed to Fine Grand, who, he says, was indebted to him for 
many things which he reckons there ; and concludes thus : 

" Forty things more, dear Grand, which you know true, 
For which, or pay me quickly, or I'll pay you." 

31 puns. 



258 JOHN DRYDEN. 

This was then the mode of wit, the vice of the age, and not lien 
Jonson's ; for you see, a little before him, that admirable wit, Sir 
Philip Sidney, perpetually playing with his words. In his time, I 
believe, it ascended first into the pulpit, where (if you will give me 
leave to clench too) it yet finds the benefit of its clergy ; for they 
are commonly the first corruptors of eloquence, and the last re- 
formed from vicious oratory ; as a famous Italian has observed 
before me, in his Treatise of the Corruption of the Italian Tongue ; 
which he principally ascribes to priests and preaching friars. 

But to conclude with what brevity I can, I will only add this 
in defence of our present writers, that, if they reach not some 
excellencies of Ben Jonson (which no age, I am confident, ever 
shall) , yet, at least, they are above that meanness of thought which 
I have taxed, and which is frequent in him. 

That the wit of this age is much more courtly, may easily be 
proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written 
in the last. First for Jonson : — True-wit, in " The Silent Woman," 
was his master-piece ; and True-wit was a scholar-like kind of man, a 
gentleman with an allay of pedantry, a man who seems mortified to 
the world by much reading. The best of his discourse is drawn, not 
from the knowledge of the town, but books ; and, in short, he 
would be a fine gentleman in an university. Shakespeare shewed 
the best of his skill in his Mercutio ; and he said himself that 
he was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed 
by him. But, for my part, I cannot find he was so dangerous a 
person : I see nothing in him but what was so exceeding harmless 
that he might have lived to the end of the play, and died in his 
bed, without offence to any man. 

Fletcher's Don John is our only bugbear ; and yet I may affirm, 
without suspicion of flattery, that he now speaks better, and that 
his character is maintained with much more vigour in the fourth and 
fifth acts, than it was by Fletcher in the three former. I have 
always acknowledged the wit of our predecessors, with all the 
veneration which becomes me, but, I am sure, their wit was not 
that of gentlemen ; there was ever somewhat that was ill-bred 



DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE. 259 

and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the 
authors. 

And this leads me to the last and greatest advantage of our writ- 
ing, which proceeds from conversation. In the age wherein those 
poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours ; neither did 
they keep the best company of theirs. Their fortune has been 
much like that of Epicurus, in the retirement of his gardens ; to live 
almost unknown, and to be celebrated after their decease. I 
cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, 
except Ben Jonson ; and his genius lay not so much that way as 
to make an improvement by it. Greatness was not then so easy 
of access, nor conversation so free, as now it is. I cannot, there- 
fore, conceive it any insolence to affirm that by the knowledge 
and pattern of their wit who writ before us, and by the advantage 
of our own conversation, the discourse and raillery of our com- 
edies excel what has been written by them. And this will be 
denied by none, but some few old fellows who value themselves on 
their acquaintance with the Black Friars ; who, because they saw 
their plays, would pretend a right to judge ours. The memory of 
these grave gentlemen is their only plea for being wits. They can 
tell a story of Ben Jonson, and, perhaps, have had fancy enough 
to give a supper in the Apollo, that they might be called his 
sons : 32 And, because they were drawn in to be laughed at in 
those times, they think themselves now sufficiently entitled to 
laugh at ours. Learning I never saw in any of them ; and wit no 
more than they could remember. In short, they were unlucky 
to have been bred in an unpolished age, and more unlucky to live 
to a refined one. They have lasted beyond their own, and are 
cast behind ours ; and, not contented to have known little at the 
age of twenty, they boast of their ignorance at threescore. 

Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so 
much refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to 

32 " The Apollo was Ben Jonson's favourite club-room in the Devil's Tavern. 
The custom of adopting his admirers and imitators by bestowing upon them the 
title of Son, is often alluded to in his works." — Scott. 



260 JOHN DRYDEN. 

the court j and, in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives 
a law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him 
an opportunity, which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes, 
I mean of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished 
courts of Europe ; and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit which was 
formed by nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and gen- 
erous education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in 
barbarism as in rebellion. And, as the excellency of his nature 
forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the 
other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern first awakened 
the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural 
reservedness ; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversa- 
tion, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. 
Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free ; and the fire 
of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained, 
melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by 
mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gayety of our 
neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder 
if the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons 
in three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it ; or, if % 
they should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of 
the present age than of the past. 

Let us therefore admire the beauties and the heights of Shake- 
speare, without falling after him into carelessness, and, as I may 
call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together. Let us 
imitate, as we are able, the quickness and easiness of Fletcher, 
without proposing him as a pattern to us, either in the redundancy 
of his matter, or the incorrectness of his language. Let us admire 
his wit and sharpness of conceit; but let us at the same time 
acknowledge that it was seldom so fixed, and made proper to his 
character, as that the same things might not be spoken by any 
person in the play. Let us applaud his scenes of love ; but let us 
confess that he understood not either greatness or perfect honour 
in the parts of any of his women. In fine, let us allow that he 
had so much fancy, as when he pleased he could write wit ; but 



DEFENCE OF THE EPILOGUE. 261 

that he wanted so much judgment, as seldom to have written 
humour, or described a pleasant folly. Let us ascribe to Jonson 
the height and accuracy of judgment in the ordering of his plots, 
his choice of characters, and maintaining what he had chosen to 
the end : But let us not think him a perfect pattern of imitation, 
except it be in humour ; for love, which is the foundation of all 
comedies in other languages, is scarcely mentioned in any of his 
plays : And for humour itself, the poets of this age will be more 
wary than to imitate the meanness of his persons. Gentlemen 
will now be entertained with the follies of each other ; and, though 
they allow Cobb and Tibb ® to speak properly, yet they are not 
much pleased with their tankard, or with their rags : And surely 
their conversation can be no jest to them on the theatre, when 
they would avoid it in the street. 

To conclude all, let us render to our predecessors what is their 
due, without confining ourselves to a servile imitation of all they 
writ ; and, without assuming to ourselves the title of better poets, 
let us ascribe to the gallantry and civility of our age the advantage 
which we have above them, and, to our knowledge of the customs 
and manners of it, the happiness we have to please beyond them. 

33 A water-bearer and his wife, characters in Ben Jonson's " Every Man in 
his Humour." Cobb is named in the Epilogue to Dryden's "Conquest of 
Granada." 



XIII. 

3. PREFACE TO THE FABLES. 

[Written in 1699.] 

It remains that I say something of Chaucer in particular. 34 
In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold 
him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, 
or the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense ; 
learned in all sciences ; and, therefore, speaks properly on all sub- 
jects. As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off; 
a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by 
any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late 
great poets 35 is sunk in his reputation, because he could never 
forgive any conceit which came in his way ; but swept, like a 
drag-net, great and small. There was plenty enough, but the 
dishes were ill sorted ; whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and 
women, but little of solid meat for men. All this proceeded not 
from any want of knowledge, but of judgment. Neither did he 
want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets, but 
only indulged himself in the luxury of writing ; and perhaps knew it 
was a fault, but hoped the reader would not find it. For this reason, 
though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer 
esteemed a good writer ; and for ten impressions, which his works 
have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred 
books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth ; for, as my last 
Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, " Not being of 
God, he could not stand." 

Chaucer followed nature everywhere, but was never so bold to 
go beyond her ; and there is a great difference of being poeta and 
nimis poeta, 36 if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a 
modest behaviour and affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I con- 
fess, is not harmonious to us ; but it is like the eloquence of one 
whom Tacitus commends, it was auribus is tins temporis accommo- 

3t Dryden had just drawn a parallel between Ovid and Chaucer, to the ad- 
vantage uf the latter. 33 Cowley. 36 too much a poet, 
263 



PREFACE TO THE FABLES. 263 

data? 1 They who lived with him, and some time after him, thought 
it musical ; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared 
with the numbers of Lidgate and Gower, his contemporaries; — 
there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural 
and pleasing, though not perfect. It is true, I cannot go so far as 
he M who published the last edition of him ; for he would make us 
believe the fault is in our ears, and there were really ten syllables 
in a verse where we find but nine ; but this opinion is not worth 
confuting ; it is so gross and obvious an error, that common sense 
(which is a rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation) 
must convince the reader that equality of numbers, in every verse 
which we call heroic, was either not known, or not always prac- 
tised, in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some 
thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, 
and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make 
otherwise. 39 We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our 
poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We 
must be children before we grow men. There was an Ennius, 
and in process of time a Lucilius, and a Lucretius, before Virgil 
and Horace ; even after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harring- 
ton, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being ; and our 
numbers were in their nonage till these last appeared. I need 
say little of his parentage, life and fortunes \ they are to be found 
at large in all the editions of his works. He was employed 
abroad, and favoured, by Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV, 
and was poet, as I suppose, to all three of them. In Richard's 
time, I doubt, he was a little dipt in the rebellion of the Com- 
mons ; and being brother-in-law to John of Gaunt, it was no won- 
der if he followed the fortunes of that family ; and was well with 
Henry IV when he had deposed his predecessor. Neither is it 
to be admired that Henry, who was a wise as well as a valiant 
prince, who claimed by succession, and was sensible that his title 
was not sound, but was rightfully in Mortimer, who had married 

37 suited to the ears of that time. 38 Thomas Speght. 

39 Dryden was ignorant of Chaucer's grammar and pronunciation, on which 
his rhythm depends, and hence made these erroneous statements. 



264 JOHN DRYDEN. 

the heir of York ; it was not to be admired, I say, if that great 
politician should be pleased to have the greatest wit of those 
times in his interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises. Au- 
gustus had given him the example, by the advice of Maecenas, 
who recommended Virgil and Horace to him ; whose praises 
helped to make him popular while he was alive, and after his 
death have made him precious to posterity. As for the religion 
of our poet, he seems to have some little bias towards the opinions 
of Wickliffe, after John of Gaunt his patron ; somewhat of which 
appears in the tale of "Pierce Plowman;" 40 yet I cannot blame 
him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in 
his age : their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their avarice, 
their worldly interest, deserved the lashes which he gave them, 
both in that, and in most of his " Canterbury Tales." Neither 
has his contemporary Boccace spared them : Yet both those poets 
lived in much esteem with good and holy men in orders ; for the 
scandal which is given by particular priests reflects not on the 
sacred function : Chaucer's Monk, his Canon and his Friar, took 
not from the character of his Good Parson. A satirical poet is 
the check of the laymen on bad priests. We are only to take 
care, that we involve not the innocent with the guilty in the same 
condemnation. The good cannot be too much honoured, nor the 
bad too coarsely used : for the corruption of the best becomes the 
worst. When a clergyman is whipped, his gown is first taken off, 
by which the dignity of his order is secured. If he be wrongfully 
accused, he has his action of slander ; and it is at the poet's peril 
if he transgress the law. But they will tell us, that all kind of 
satire, though never so well deserved by particular priests, yet 
brings the whole order into contempt. Is then the peerage of 
England anything dishonoured when a peer suffers for his treason ? 
If he [be ?] libelled, or any way defamed, he has his scandalum mag- 
natum 41 to punish the offender. They who use this kind of argu- 

40 Langland's " Vision of Piers Plowman,'' whose views Dryden seems to 
confound with Chaucer's, and his poem with the spurious " Plowman's Tale." 

41 "A defamatory speech or writing made or published to the injury of a 
person of dignity." 



PREFACE TO THE FABLES. 265 

ment, seem to be conscious to themselves of somewhat which has 
deserved the poet's lash, and are less concerned for their public 
capacity than for their private ; at least there is pride at the bot- 
tom of their reasoning. If the faults of men in orders are only to 
be judged among themselves, they are all in some sort parties ; 
for, since they say the honour of their order is concerned in every 
member of it, how can we be sure that they will be impartial 
judges? How far I may be allowed to speak my opinion in this 
case, I know not ; but I am sure a dispute of this nature caused 
mischief in abundance betwixt a king of England and an arch- 
bishop of Canterbury ; one standing up for the laws of his land, 
and the other for the honour, as he called it, of God's church ; 
which ended in the murder of the prelate, and in the whipping of 
his majesty from post to pillar for his penance. The learned and 
ingenious Dr. Drake has saved one the labour of inquiring into the 
esteem and reverence which the priests have had of old ; and I 
would rather extend than diminish any part of it ; yet I must 
needs say, that when a priest provokes me without any occasion 
given him, I have no reason, unless it be the charity of a Chris- 
tian, to forgive him : prior IcEsit® is justification sufficient in the 
civil law. If I answer him in his own language, self-defence, I 
am sure, must be allowed me ; and if I carry it farther, even to a 
sharp recrimination, somewhat may be indulged to human frailty. 
Yet my resentment has not wrought so far, but that I have fol- 
lowed Chaucer in his character of a holy man, and have en- 
larged on that subject with some pleasure, reserving to myself the 
right, if I shall think fit hereafter, to describe another sort of 
priests, such as are more easily to be found than the Good Parson ; 
such as have given the last blow to Christianity in this age, by a 
practice so contrary to their doctrine. But this will keep cold till 
another time. 43 In the meanwhile, I take up Chaucer where I left 
him. 

42 he first did the injury. 

43 This digression of Dryden's seems to be aimed at Jeremy Collier, whose 
" Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage " was 
published in 1698. 



266 JOHN DRYDEN. 

He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive 
nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken 
into the compass of his " Canterbury Tales " the various manners 
and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation 
in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pil- 
grims are severally distinguished from each other ; and not only 
in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. 
Baptista Porta 44 could not have described their natures better 
than by the marks which the poet gives them. 

The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are 
so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that 
each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the 
grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several 
sorts of gravity : their discourses are such as belong to their age, 
their calling, and their breeding ; such as are becoming of them, 
and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some 
virtuous ; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, 45 
and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is 
different ; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, 
and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady 
Prioress, and the broad-speaking, gap-toothed, 46 Wife of Bath. 
But enough of this ; there is such a variety of game springing up 
before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which 
to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the poorest, that 
here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great-grand- 
dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days ; their general 
characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, 
though they are called by other names than those of monks, and 
friars, and canons, and lady abbesses, and nuns ; for mankind is 
ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything 
is altered. May I have leave to do myself the justice, (since my 

44 " A famous Italian physiognomist." 

45 lewd meant unlearned in Chaucer's time. 

46 gat-tothed, Prologue, 468, having teeth wide apart. See note in Skeat's 
edition of Morris's " Prologue and Knight's Tale." 



PREFACE TO THE FABLES. 267 

enemies will do me none, and are so far from granting me to be a 
good poet, that they will not allow me so much as to be a Chris- 
tian, or a moral man,) may I have leave, I say, to inform my 
reader, that I have confined my choice to such tales of Chaucer 
as savour nothing of immodesty. If I had desired more to please 
than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, 
the Sumner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath, in the prologue to 
her tale, would have procured me as many friends and readers, as 
there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I will no 
more offend against good manners. I am sensible, as I ought to 
be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings ; and make 
what reparation I am able, by this public acknowledgment. If 
anything of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these 
poems, I am so far from defending it, that I disown it, totum hoc 
indicium vofof Chaucer makes another manner of apology for 
his broad speaking, and Boccace makes the like j but I will follow 
neither of them. 48 

****** 
I have almost done with Chaucer, when I have answered some 
objections relating to my present work. I find some people are 
offended that I have turned these tales into modern English; 
because they think them unworthy of my pains, and look on 
Chaucer as a dry, old-fashioned wit, not worthy reviving. I have 
often heard the late Earl of Leicester say, that Mr. Cowley himself 
was of that opinion ; who, having read him over at my lord's 
request, declared he had no taste of him. I dare not advance my 
opinion against the judgment of so great an author; but I think 
it fair, however, to leave the decision to the public. Mr. Cowley 
was too modest to set up for a dictator ; and being shocked per- 
haps with his old style, never examined into the depth of his 
good sense. Chaucer, I confess, is a rough diamond, and must 
first be polished, ere he shines. I deny not likewise, that, living 
in our early days of poetry, he writes not always of a piece ; but 

47 / wish it altogether unsaid. 

48 Dryden quotes here Chaucer's Prologue, 726-742, with brief comment. 



268 JOHN DRYDEN. 

sometimes mingles trivial things with those of greater moment. 
Sometimes also, though not often, he runs riot, like Ovid, and 
knows not when he has said enough. But there are more great 
wits beside Chaucer, whose fault is their excess of conceits, and 
those ill-sorted. An author is not to write all he can, but only all 
he ought. Having observed this redundancy in Chaucer, (as it 
is an easy matter for a man of ordinary parts to find a fault in 
one of greater,) I have not tied myself to a literal translation ; but 
have often omitted what I judged unnecessary, or not of dignity 
enough to appear in the company of better thoughts. I have 
presumed farther, in some places, and added somewhat of my 
own where I thought my author was deficient, and had not given 
his thoughts their true lustre, for want of words in the beginning 
of our language. And to this I was the more emboldened, 
because (if I may be permitted to say it of myself) I found I 
had a soul congenial to his, and that I had been conversant in the 
same studies. Another poet, in another age, may take the same 
liberty with my writings ; if at least they live long enough to de- 
serve correction. It was also necessary sometimes to restore the 
sense of Chaucer, which was lost or mangled in the errors of the 
press. Let this example suffice at present : in the story of Pala- 
mon and Arcite, where the temple of Diana is described, you find 
these verses in all the editions of our author : 

" Ther saw I Dane yturned til a tree, 
I mene not hire the goddesse Diane, 
But Venus daughter, which that hight Dane;" 49 

which, after a little consideration, I knew was to be reformed into 
this sense, — that Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was turned 
into a tree. I durst not make thus bold with Ovid, lest some 
future Milboume should arise, and say, I vary from my author, 
because I understood him not. 

But there are other judges, who think I ought not to have trans- 
lated Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion : they 

49 This error of Venus for Peneus was corrected by Tyrwhitt, being an error 
of the press; but Dryden reads hight for highfe, which destroys the rhythm. 
For a better text, see Skeat's Morris's Knight's Tale, 1204- 1206. 



PREFACE TO THE FABLES. 269 

suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language ; and 
that it is little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. 
They are farther of opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will 
suffer in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts 
will infallibly be lost, which appear with more grace in their old 
habit. Of this opinion was that excellent person, whom I men- 
tioned, the late Earl of Leicester, who valued Chaucer as much as 
Mr. Cowley despised him. My lord dissuaded me from this 
attempt, (for I was thinking of it some years before his death,) 
and his authority prevailed so far with me, as to defer my under- 
taking while he lived, in deference to him : yet my reason was not 
convinced with what he urged against it. If the first end of a 
writer be to be understood, then, as his language grows obsolete, 
his thoughts must grow obscure : 

Multa renascentur, qiue jam cecidere, cadentque 
Quce nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, 
Quern penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi. 50 

When an ancient word, for its sound and significancy, deserves 
to be revived, I have that reasonable veneration for antiquity to 
restore it. All beyond this is superstition. Words are not like 
landmarks, so sacred as never to be removed; customs are 
changed, and even statutes are silently repealed, when the reason 
ceases for which they were enacted. As for the other part of the 
argument, — that his thoughts will lose of their original beauty by 
the innovation of words, — in the first place, not only their beauty, 
but their being is lost, where they are no longer understood, which 
is the present case. I grant that something must be lost in all 
transfusion, that is, in all translations ; but the sense will remain, 
which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maimed when it is 
scarce intelligible, and that but to a few. How few are there, who 
can read Chaucer so as to understand him perfectly? And if im- 
perfectly, then with less profit, and no pleasure. It is not for the 
use of some old Saxon friends, that I have taken these pains with 

50 Many words will revive that have now fallen, and will fall that are now 
in honor, if custom wills it, in whose power is the decision and the law and 
the rule of speech. — HORACE, Ars Poetic a, 70-72. 



270 JOHN DRYDEN. 

him : let them neglect my version, because they have no need of 
it. I made it for their sakes, who understand sense and poetry as 
well as they, when that poetry and sense is put into words which 
they understand. I will go farther, and dare to add, that what 
beauties I lose in some places, I give to others which had them not 
originally: but in this I may be partial to myself; let the reader 
judge, and I submit to his decision. Yet I think I have just occa- 
sion to complain of them, who, because they understand Chaucer, 
would deprive the greater part of their countrymen of the same 
advantage, and hoard him up, as misers do their grandam gold, 
only to look on it themselves, and hinder others from making 
use of it. In sum, I seriously protest that no man ever had, or 
can have, a greater veneration for Chaucer than myself. I have 
translated some part of his works, only that I might perpetuate his 
memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my countrymen. If I have 
altered him anywhere for the better, I must at the same time 
acknowledge that I could have done nothing without him. Facile 
est i nve litis ad/ere 51 is no great commendation; and I am not so 
vain to think I have deserved a greater. I will conclude what I 
have to say of him singly, with this one remark : A lady of my 
acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence with some 
authors of the fair sex in France, has been informed by them that 
Mademoiselle de Scuderi, who is as old as Sibyl, and inspired like 
her by the same god of poetry, is at this time translating Chaucer 
into modern French. 52 From which I gather, that he has been 
formerly translated into the old Provencal ; for how she should come 
to understand old English, I know not. But the matter of fact 
being true, it makes me think that there is something in it like 
fatality ; that, after certain periods of time, the fame and memory 
of great wits should be renewed, as Chaucer is both in France 
and England. If this be wholly chance, it is extraordinary ; and I 
dare not call it more, for fear of being taxed with superstition. 

51 // is easy to add to what has been found. 

52 « This lady lived to the age of ninety-four . . . [and] died about eighteen 
months after this discourse was written. There is no reason to think she was 
seriously engaged in translating Chaucer." — Scott. 



XIV. 

JONATHAN SWIFT. 

(1667-1745.) 

A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE FOUGHT 
LAST FRIDAY BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND THE 
MODERN BOOKS IN SAINT JAMES'S LIBRARY. 

[Published in 1704, but written in 1697.] 

The Bookseller to the Reader. 

The following discourse, as it is unquestionably of the same 
author, so it seems to have been written about the same time with 
["The Tale of a Tub "]*, I mean the year 1697, when the famous 
dispute was on foot about Ancient and Modern Learning. The 
controversy took its rise from an essay of Sir William Temple's 
upon that subject ; which was answered by W. Wotton, B. D., with 
an appendix by Dr. Bentley, endeavouring to destroy the credit of 
^Esop and Phalaris for authors, whom Sir William Temple had, 
in the essay before mentioned, highly commended. In that 
appendix the Doctor falls hard upon a new edition of Phalaris, 
put out by the Honourable Charles Boyle, now Earl of Orrery, 
to which Mr. Boyle replied at large with great learning and wit ; 
and the Doctor voluminously rejoined. In this dispute the town 
highly resented to see a person of Sir William Temple's charac- 
ter and merits roughly used by the two reverend gentlemen afore- 
said, and without any manner of provocation. At length, there ap- 
pearing no end of the quarrel, our author tells us that the BOOKS 
in St. James's Library, looking upon themselves as parties princi- 

* " the former," in the original text, as the two books were published 
together. 

271 



272 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

pally concerned, took up the controversy, and came to a decisive 
battle ) but the manuscript, by the injury of fortune or weather, 
being in several places imperfect, we cannot learn to which side 
the victory fell. 

I must warn the reader to beware of applying to persons what 
is here meant only of books, in the most literal sense. So, when 
Virgil is mentioned, we are not to understand the person of a 
famous poet called by that name ; but only certain sheets of paper 
bound up in leather, containing in print the works of the said 
poet : and so of the rest. 

The Preface of the Author. 

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover 
everybody's face but their own ; which is the chief reason for that 
kind of reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few 
are offended with it. But, if it should happen otherwise, the 
danger is not great ; and I have learned from long experience 
never to apprehend mischief from those understandings I have 
been able to provoke : for anger and fury, though they add 
strength to the sinews of the body, yet are found to relax those of 
the mind, and to render all its efforts feeble and impotent. 

There is a brain that will endure but one scumming ; let the 
owner gather it with discretion, and manage his little stock with 
husbandry ; but, of all things, let him beware of bringing it under 
the lash of his betters, because that will make it all bubble up 
into impertinence, and he will find no new supply. Wit without 
knowledge being a sort of cream, which gathers in a night to the 
top, and by a skilful hand may be soon whipped into froth ; but 
once scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for 
nothing but to be thrown to the hogs. 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS, 



The Battle of the Books. 



273 



Whoever examines, with due circumspection, into the annual 
records of Time, will find it remarked that War is the child of 
Pride and Pride the daughter of Riches : - the former of which 
assertions may be soon granted, but one cannot so easily subscribe 
to the latter ; for Pride is nearly related to Beggary and Want, 
either by father or mother, and sometimes by both : and, to speak 
naturally, it very seldom happens among men to fall out when all 
have enough; invasions usually travelling from north to south, 
that is to say, from poverty to plenty. The most ancient and 
natural grounds of quarrels are lust and avarice ; which, though 
we may allow to be brethren, or collateral branches of pride, are 
certainly the issues of want. For, to speak in the phrase of writers 
upon politics, we may observe in the republic of dogs, which in its 
original seems to be an institution of the many, that the whole 
state is ever in the profoundest peace after a full meal ; and that 
civil broils arise among them when it happens for one great bone 
to be seized on by some leading dog, who either divides it among 
the few, and then it falls to an oligarchy, or keeps it to himself, 

and then it runs up to a tyranny Again, if we look upon any 

of these republics engaged in a foreign war, either of invasion or 
defence, we shall find the same reasoning will serve as to the 
grounds and occasions of each ; and that poverty or want, in some 
degree or other (whether real or in opinion, which makes no alter- 
ation in the case), has a great share, as well as pride, on the part 
of the aggressor. 

Now, whoever will please to take this scheme, and either reduce 
or adapt it to an intellectual state or commonwealth of learning, 
will soon discover the first ground of disagreement between the 
two great parties at this time in arms, and may form just conclu- 
sions upon the merits of either cause. But the issue or events of 
this war are not so easy to conjecture at ; for the present quarrel 
is so inflamed by the warm heads of either faction, and the preten- 



274 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

sions somewhere or other so exorbitant, as not to admit the least 
overtures of accommodation. This quarrel first began, as I have 
heard it affirmed by an old dweller in the neighbourhood, about a 
small spot of ground, lying and being upon one of the two tops of 
the hill Parnassus ; the highest and largest of which had, it seems, 
been time out of mind in quiet possession of certain tenants, called 
the Ancients \ and the other was held by the Moderns. But these, 
disliking their present station, sent certain ambassadors to the 
Ancients, complaining of a great nuisance ; how the height of that 
part of Parnassus quite spoiled the prospect of theirs, especially 
towards the East ; and therefore, to avoid a war, offered them the 
choice of this alternative, either that the Ancients would please to 
remove themselves and their effects down to the lower summit, 
which the Moderns would graciously surrender to them, and 
advance into their place ; or else the said Ancients will give leave 
to the Moderns to come with shovels and mattocks, and level the 
said hill as low as they shall think it convenient. To which the 
Ancients made answer, how little they expected such a message as 
this from a colony whom they had admitted, out of their own free 
grace, to so near a neighbourhood. That, as to their own seat, 
they were aborigines of it, and therefore to talk with them of a 
removal or surrender was a language they did not understand. 
That, if the height of the hill on their side shortened the prospect 
of the Moderns, it was a disadvantage they could not help ; but 
desired them to consider whether that injury (if it be any) were 
not largely recompensed by the shade and shelter it afforded them. 
That, as to the levelling or digging down, it was either folly or 
ignorance to propose it, if they did or did not know how that side 
of the hill was an entire rock, which would break their tools and 
hearts, without any damage to itself. That they would therefore 
advise the Moderns rather to raise their own side of the hill than 
dream of pulling down that of the Ancients ; to the former of 
which they would not only give license, but also largely contribute. 
All this was rejected by the Moderns with much indignation, who 
still insisted upon one of the two expedients ; and so this differ- 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 



275 



ence broke out into a long and obstinate war, maintained on the 
one part by resolution, and by the courage of certain leaders and 
allies ; but, on the other, by the greatness of their number, upon 
all defeats affording continual recruits. In this quarrel whole rivu- 
lets of ink have been exhausted, and the virulence of both parties 
enormously augmented. Now, it must be here understood, that 
ink is the great missive weapon in all battles of the learned, which, 
conveyed through a sort of engine called a quill, infinite numbers 
of these are darted at the enemy by the valiant on each side, with 
equal skill and violence, as if it were an engagement of porcupines. 
This malignant liquor was compounded, by the engineer who in- 
vented it, of two ingredients which are gall and copperas ; by its 
bitterness and venom to suit, in some degree, as well as to foment, 
the genius of the combatants. And as the Grecians, after an 
engagement, when they could not agree about the victory, were 
wont to set up trophies on both sides, the beaten party being 
content to be at the same expense, to keep itself in countenance 
(a laudable and ancient custom, happily revived of late in the art 
of war), so the learned, after a sharp and bloody dispute, do, on 
both sides, hang out their trophies too, whichever comes by the 
worst. These trophies have largely inscribed on them the merits 
of the cause ; a full impartial account of such a Battle, and how 
the victory fell clearly to the party that set them up. They are 
known to the world under several names ; as disputes, arguments, 
rejoinders, brief considerations, answers, replies, remarks, reflec- 
tions, objections, confutations. For a very few days they are fixed 
up in all public places, either by themselves or their representatives, 
for passengers to gaze at ; whence the chiefest and largest are 
removed to certain magazines they call libraries, there to remain 
in a quarter purposely assigned them, and thenceforth begin to be 
called books of controversy. 

In these books is wonderfully instilled and preserved the spirit 
of each warrior while he is alive ; and after his death his soul 
transmigrates thither to inform them. This, at least, is the more 
common opinion; but I believe it is with libraries as with other 



276 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

cemeteries, where some philosophers affirm that a certain spirit, 
which they call brututn hominis, 1 hovers over the monument, till 
the body is corrupted and turns to dust or to worms, but then 
vanishes or dissolves; so we may say a restless spirit haunts 
over every book, till dust or worms have seized upon it — which 
to some may happen in a few days, but to others later — and 
therefore, books of controversy being, of all others, haunted by the 
most disorderly spirits, have always been confined in a separate 
lodge from the rest, and for fear of a mutual violence against each 
other, it was thought prudent by our ancestors to bind them to the 
peace with strong iron chains. Of which invention the original 
occasion was this : When the works of Scotus first came out, they 
were carried to a certain library, and had lodgings appointed 
them; but this author was no sooner settled than he went to visit 
his master Aristotle, and there both concerted together to se ze 
Plato by main force, and turn him out from his ancient stati on 
among the divines, where he had peaceably dwelt near eight hun- 
dred years. The attempt succeeded, and the two usurpers have 
reigned ever since in his stead ; but, to maintain quiet for the 
future, it was decreed that all polemics of the larger size should be 
held fast with a chain. 

By this expedient, the public peace of libraries might certainly 
have been preserved if a new species of controversial books had 
not arose of late years, instinct with a more malignant spirit, from 
the war above mentioned between the learned about the higher 
summit of Parnassus. 

When these books were first admitted into the public libraries, 
I remember to have said, upon occasion, to several persons con- 
cerned, how I was sure they would create broils wherever they 
came, unless a world of care were taken ; and therefore I advised 
that the champions of each side should be coupled together, or 
otherwise mixed, that, like the blending of contrary poisons, their 
malignity might be employed among themselves. And it seems I 
was neither an ill prophet nor an ill counsellor ; for it was nothing 
1 the irrational part of man. 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 277 

else but the neglect of this caution which gave occasion to the 
terrible fight that happened on Friday last between the Ancient 
and Modern Books in the King's Library. Now, because the talk 
of this battle is so fresh in everybody's mouth, and the expecta- 
tion of the town so great to be informed in the particulars, I, 
being possessed of all qualifications requisite in an historian, and 
retained by neither party, have resolved to comply with the urgent 
importunity of my friends, by writing down a full impartial 
account thereof. 

The guardian of the Regal Library, 2 a person of great valour, but 
chiefly renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion 
for the Moderns, and, in an engagement upon Parnassus, had 
vowed with his own hands to knock down two of the ancient 
chiefs 3 who guarded a small pass on the superior rock, but, en- 
deavouring to climb up, was cruelly obstructed by his own unhappy 
weight and tendency towards his centre, a quality to which those 
of the Modern party are extremely subject ; for, being light- 
headed, they have, in speculation, a wonderful agility, and con- 
ceive nothing too high for them to mount, but, in reducing to 
practice, discover a mighty pressure about their posteriors and 
their heels. Having thus failed in his design, the disappointed 
champion bore a cruel rancour to the Ancients, which he resolved 
to gratify by showing all marks of his favour to the books of their 
adversaries, and lodging them in the fairest apartments ; when, at 
the same time, whatever book had the boldness to own itself for 
an advocate of the Ancients was buried alive in some obscure cor- 
ner, and threatened,. upon the least displeasure, to be turned out 
of doors. Besides, it so happened that about this time there was 
a strange confusion of place among all the books in the library, 

2 Richard Bentley, the noted classical scholar and critic, author of the 
" Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris." Boyle, who edited " The Epistles 
of Phalaris," charged that Bentley, " of his very great humanity," refused him 
the use of a manuscript of these Epistles. (See Bentley's Life, by Professor 
Jebb, in " English Men of Letters.") 

3 Phalaris and JEsop. 



27S JONATHAN SWIFT. 

for which several reasons were assigned. Some imputed it to a 
great heap of learned dust, which a perverse wind blew off from 
a shelf of Moderns into the keeper's eyes. Others affirmed he 
had a humour to pick the worms out of the schoolmen, and swal- 
low them fresh and fasting, whereof some fell upon his spleen, and 
some climbed up into his head, to the great perturbation of both. 
And lastly, others maintained that, by walking much in the dark 
about the library, he had quite lost the situation of it out of his 
head ; and therefore, in replacing his books, he was apt to mistake 
and clap Descartes next to Aristotle, poor Plato had got between 
Hobbes and the Seven Wise Masters, and Virgil was hemmed in 
with Dryden on one side and Wither on the other. 

Meanwhile, those books that were advocates for the Moderns, 
chose out one from among them to make a progress through the 
whole library, examine the number and strength of their party, 
and concert their affairs. This messenger performed all things 
very industriously, and brought back with him a list of their 
forces, in all fifty thousand, consisting chiefly of light-horse, 
heavy-armed foot, and mercenaries ; whereof the foot were in 
general but sorrily armed and worse clad ; their horses large, but 
extremely out of case and heart ; however, some few, by trading 
among the Ancients, had furnished themselves tolerably enough. 

While things were in this ferment, discord grew extremely 
high ; hot words passed on both sides, and ill blood was plenti- 
fully bred. Here a solitary Ancient, squeezed up among a whole 
shelf of Moderns, offered fairly to dispute the case, and to prove 
by manifest reason that the priority was due to them from long 
possession, and in regard of their prudence, antiquity, and, above 
all, their great merits toward the Moderns. But these denied the 
premises, and seemed very much to wonder how the Ancients 
could pretend to insist upon their antiquity, when it was so plain 
(if they went to that) that the Moderns were much the more 
ancient of the two. As for any obligations they owed to the 
Ancients, they renounced them all. "It is true," said they, "we 
are informed some few of our party have been so mean as to bor- 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 



279 



row their subsistence from you, but the rest, infinitely the greater 
number (and especially we French and English), were so far from 
stooping to so base an example, that there never passed, till this 
very hour, six words between us. For our horses were of our own 
breeding, our arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own 
cutting out and sewing." Plato was by chance up on the next 
shelf, and observing those that spoke to be in the ragged plight 
mentioned a while ago, their jades lean and foundered, their 
weapons of rotten wood, their armour rusty, and nothing but rags 
underneath, he laughed loud, and in his pleasant way swore, By 
, he believed them. 

Now, the Moderns had not proceeded in their late negotiation 
with secrecy enough to escape the notice of the enemy. For 
those advocates who had begun the quarrel, by setting first on foot 
the dispute of precedency, talked so loud of coming to a battle, 
that Sir William Temple happened to overhear them, and gave 
immediate intelligence to the Ancients, who thereupon drew up 
their scattered troops together, resolving to act upon the defen- 
sive ; upon which, several of the Moderns fled over to their party, 
and among the rest Temple himself. This Temple, having been 
educated and long conversed among the Ancients, was, of all 
the Moderns, their greatest favourite, and became their greatest 
champion. 

Things were at this crisis when a material accident fell out. 
For, upon the highest corner of a large window, there dwelt a 
certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction 
of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the 
gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some 
giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes 4 
and palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification. After 
you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein 
you might behold the constable himself in his Own lodgings, which 
had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon 
all occasions of prey or defence. In this mansion he had for 
4 "Pikes to turn back assailants." — Nares, 



280 JONATHAN S IV TFT. 

some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his per- 
son by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from 
below ; when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a 
wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had 
discovered itself, and in he went, where, expatiating a while, he 
at last happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the 
spider's citadel \ which, yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down 
to the very foundation. Thrice he endeavoured to force his pas- 
sage, and thrice the centre shook. The spider within, feeling the 
terrible convulsion, supposed at first that nature was approaching 
to her final dissolution, or else that Beelzebub, with all his legions, 
was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects 
whom his enemy had slain and devoured. However, he at length 
valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile 
the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at 
some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengag- 
ing them from the ragged remnants of the cobweb. By this time 
the spider was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the 
ruins, and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wit's 
end ; he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he 
was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and 
wisely gathering causes from events (for they knew each other by 
sight), " A plague split you," said he ; ... " is it you, with a ven- 
geance, that have made this litter here ; could not you look before 

you, and be ? Do you think I have nothing else to do (in 

the devil's name) but to mend and repair after [you] ? " " Good 
words, friend," said the bee, (having now pruned 5 himself, and 
being disposed to droll) ; " I'll give you my hand and word to 
come near your kennel no more ; I was never in such a con- 
founded pickle since I was born." " Sirrah," replied the spider, 
" if it were not for breaking an old custom in our family, never to 
stir abroad against an enemy, I should come and teach you better 
manners." "I pray have patience," said the bee, "or you'll 
spend your substance, and, for aught I see, you may stand in need 
5 trimmed himself, removed the cobwebs. 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 281 

of it all, towards the repair of your house." " Rogue, rogue," re- 
plied the spider, " yet niethinks you should have more respect to 
a person whom all the world allows to be so much your betters." 
"By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a 
very good jest, and you will do me a favour to let me know the 
reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute." 
At this the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture 
of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of contro- 
versy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry, to urge 
on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or 
objections of his opposite, and fully predetermined in his mind 
against all conviction. 

" Not to disparage myself," said he, " by the comparison with 
such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or 
home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of 
your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood 
is a universal plunder upon nature ; a freebooter over fields and 
gardens ; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily 
as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a 
native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my im- 
provements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, 
and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person." 

" I am glad," answered the bee, " to hear you grant at least 
that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice ; for then, 
it seems, I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my 
music ; and Providence would never have bestowed on me two 
such gifts without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit, 
indeed, all the flowers and blossoms of the field and garden, but 
whatever I collect thence enriches myself without the least injury 
to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now, for you and your 
skill in architecture and other mathematics, I have little to say : in 
that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been 
labour and method enough ; but, by woeful experience for us 
both, it is too plain the materials are naught ; and I hope you 
will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as 



2S2 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

well as method and art. You boast, indeed, of being obliged to 
no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from your- 
self; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by 
what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and 
poison in your breast ; and, though I would by no means lessen 
or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are 
somewhat obliged, for an increase of both, to a little foreign as- 
sistance. Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisi- 
tions, by sweepings exhaled from below ; and one insect furnishes 
you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, 
the question comes all to this : whether 6 is the nobler being of 
the two, that which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, 
by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns 
all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but fly- 
bane and a cobweb ; or that which, by a universal range, with 
long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, 
brings home honey and wax." 

This dispute was managed with such eagerness, clamour, and 
warmth, that the two parties of books, in arms below, stood silent 
a while, waiting in suspense what would be the issue ; which was 
not long undetermined : for the bee, grown impatient at so much 
loss of time, fled straight away to a bed of roses, without looking 
for a reply, and left the spider, like an orator, collected in him- 
self, and just prepared to burst out. 

It happened upon this emergency that JEsop broke silence 
first. He had been of late most barbarously treated by a strange 
effect of the Regent's humanity, who had torn off his title-page, 
sorely defaced one half of his leaves, and chained him fast among 
a shelf of Moderns. Where, soon discovering how high the quar- 
rel was likely to proceed, he tried all his arts, and turned himself 
to a thousand forms. At length, in the borrowed shape of an 
ass, the Regent mistook him for a Modern ; by which means he 
had time and opportunity to escape to the Ancients, just when 
the spider and the bee were entering into their contest ; to which 

6 Late use of the old pronoun = which of the two. 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 283 

he gave his attention with a world of pleasure, and, when it was 
ended, swore in the loudest key that in all his life he had never 
known two cases so parallel and adapt to each other as that in 
the window and this upon the shelves. " The disputants," said 
he, " have admirably managed the dispute between them, have 
taken in the full strength of all that is to be said on both sides, 
exhausted the substance of every argument pro and con. It is 
but to adjust the reasonings of both to the present quarrel, then 
to compare and apply the labours and fruits of each, as the bee 
has learnedly deduced them, and we shall find the conclusion fall 
plain and close upon the Moderns and us. For pray, gentlemen, 
was ever anything so modern as the spider in his air, his turns, 
and his paradoxes? he argues in the behalf of you, his brethren, 
and himself, with many boastings of his native stock and great 
genius ; that he spins and spits wholly from himself, and scorns 
to own any obligation or assistance from without. Then he dis- 
plays to you his great skill in architecture and improvement in 
the mathematics. To all this the bee, as an advocate retained by 
us, the Ancients, thinks fit to answer, that, if one may judge of 
the great genius or inventions of the Moderns by what they have 
produced, you will hardly have countenance to bear you out in 
boasting of either. Erect your schemes with as much method 
and skill as you please ; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt, 
spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the 
edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb ; the duration of which, 
like that of other spiders' webs, may be imputed to their being 
forgotten, or neglected, or hid in a corner. For anything else of 
genuine that the Moderns may pretend to, I cannot recollect ; 
unless it be a large vein of wrangling and satire, much of a nature 
and substance with the spiders' poison ; which, however they 
pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is improved by the same 
arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin of the age. As for 
us, the Ancients, we are content with the bee, to pretend to noth- 
ing of our own beyond our wings and our voice : that is to say, 
our flights and our language. For the rest, whatever we have got 



284 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

has been by infinite labour and search, and ranging through every 
corner of nature ; the difference is, that, instead of dirt and 
poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and 
wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, 
which are sweetness and light." 7 

It is wonderful to conceive the tumult arisen among the books 
upon the close of this long descant of ^Esop : both parties took the 
hint, and heightened their animosities so on a sudden, that they 
resolved it should come to a battle. Immediately the two main 
bodies withdrew, under their several ensigns, to the farther parts 
of the library, and there entered into cabals and consults upon the 
present emergency. The Moderns were in very warm debates 
upon the choice of their leaders ; and nothing less than the fear 
impending from their enemies could have kept them fromThutinies 
upon this occasion. The difference was greatest among the horse, 
where every private trooper pretended to the chief command, from 
Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Wither. The light-horse were 
commanded by Cowley and Despreaux. 8 There came the bowmen 
under their valiant leaders, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes ; 
whose strength was such that they could shoot their arrows beyond 
the atmosphere, never to fall down again, but turn, like that of 
Evander, into meteors ; or, like the cannon ball, into stars. Para- 
celsus brought a squadron . . . from the snowy mountains of 
Rh?etia. There came a vast body of dragoons, of different na- 
tions, under the leading of Harvey, 9 there great aga : part armed 
with sithes, the weapons of death ; part with lances and long 
knives, all steeped in poison ; part shot bullets of a most malig- 
nant nature, and used white powder, which infallibly killed without 
report. There came several bodies of heavy-armed foot, all mer- 
cenaries, under the ensigns of Guicciardini, Davila, Polydore 
Virgil, Buchanan, Mariana, Camden, and others. The engineers 

7 The original of Mr. Matthew Arnold's favorite phrase. 

8 i.e. Boileau. 

9 Sir William Temple had taken exception to Harvey's discovery of the 
circulation of the blood. 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 285 

were commanded by Regiomontanus and Wilkins. The lest was a 
confused multitude, led by Scotus, Aquinas, and Bellarmine ; of 
mighty bulk and stature, but without either arms, courage, or disci- 
pline. In the last place came infinite swarms of calones™ a disorderly 
rout led by L'Estrange ; rogues and raggamuffins, that follow the 
camp for nothing but the plunder, all without coats to cover them. 

The army of the Ancients was much fewer in number ; Homer 
led the horse, and Pindar the light-horse ; Euclid was chief en- 
gineer ; Plato and Aristotle commanded the bowmen ; Herodotus 
and Livy the foot ; Hippocrates, the dragoons ; the allies, led by 
Vossius and Temple, brought up the rear. 

All things violently tending to a decisive battle, Fame, who much 
frequented, and had a large apartment formerly assigned her in the 
Regal Library, fled up straight to Jupiter, to whom she delivered a 
faithful account of all that passed between the two parties below ; 
for among the gods she always tells truth. Jove, in great concern, 
convokes a council in the Milky Way. The senate assembled, he 
declares the occasion of convening them ; a bloody battle just 
impendent between two mighty armies of ancient and modern 
creatures, called books, wherein the celestial interest was but too 
deeply concerned. Momus, the patron of the Moderns, made an 
excellent speech in their favour, which was answered by Pallas, the 
protectress of the Ancients. The assembly was divided in their 
affections ; when Jupiter commanded the Book of Fate to be laid 
before him. Immediately were brought by Mercury three large 
volumes in folio, containing memoirs of all things past, present, and 
to come. The clasps were of silver double gilt, the covers of 
celestial turkey-leather, and the paper such as here on earth might 
pass almost for vellum. Jupiter, having silently read the decree, 
would communicate the import to none, but presently shut up the 
book. 

Without the doors of this assembly there attended a vast num- 
ber of light, nimble gods, menial servants to Jupiter : these are his 
ministering instruments in all affairs below. They travel in a cara- 
10 soldiers' servants, camp-followers. 



286 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

van, more or less together, and are fastened to each other like a 
link of galley-slaves, by a light chain, which passes from them to 
Jupiter's great toe : and yet, in receiving or delivering a message, 
they may never approach above the lowest step of his throne, where 
he and they whisper to each other through a large hollow trunk. 11 
These deities are called by mortal men accidents or events ; but 
the gods call them second causes. Jupiter having delivered his 
message to a certain number of these divinities, they flew immedi- 
ately down to the pinnacle of the Regal Library, and consulting a 
few minutes, entered unseen, and disposed the parties according to 
their orders. 

Meanwhile Momus, fearing the worst, and calling to mind an 
ancient prophecy which bore no very good face to his children 
the Moderns, bent his flight to the region of a malignant deity 
called Criticism. She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in 
Nova Zembla ; there Momus found her extended in her den, upon 
the spoils of numberless volumes, half devoured. At her right 
hand sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age ; at 
her left, Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper 
herself had torn. There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, 
hood-winked, and headstrong, yet giddy, and perpetually turning. 
About her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness 
and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry and Ill-manners. The god- 
dess herself had claws like a cat ; her head, and ears, and voice 
resembled those of an ass ; her teeth fallen out before, her eyes 
turned inward, as if she looked only upon herself; her diet was 
the overflowing of her own gall; her spleen was so large as to 
stand prominent, like a dug of the first rate ; nor wanted excres- 
cencies in form of teats, at which a crew of ugly monsters were 
greedily suckling ; and, what is wonderful to conceive, the bulk 
of spleen increased faster than the sucking could diminish it. 
" Goddess," said Momus, " can you sit idly here while our devout 
worshippers, the Moderns, are this minute entering into a cruel 
battle, and perhaps now lying under the swords of their enemies? 

11 tube. 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 287 

who then hereafter will ever sacrifice or build altars to our divin- 
ities ? Haste, therefore, to the British Isle, and, if possible, pre- 
vent their destruction ; while I make factions among the gods, 
and gain them over to our party." 

Momus, having thus delivered himself, stayed not for an answer, 
but left the goddess to her own resentment. Up she rose in a 
rage, and, as it is the form on such occasions, began a soliloquy : 
" It is I " (said she) " who give wisdom to infants and idiots ; 
by me children grow wiser than their parents, by me beaux 
become politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy ; by me 
sophisters debate and conclude upon the depths of knowledge ; 
and coffee-house wits, instinct by me, can correct an author's 
style, and display his minutest errours, without understanding a 
syllable of his matter or his language ; by me striplings spend 
their judgment, as they do their estate, before it comes into their 
hands. It is I who have deposed wit and knowledge from their 
empire over poetry, and advanced myself in their stead. And 
shall a few upstart Ancients dare to oppose me ? — But come, my 
aged parent, and you, my children dear, and thou, my beauteous 
sister ; let us ascend my chariot, and haste to assist our devout 
Moderns, who are now sacrificing to us a hecatomb, as I perceive 
by that grateful smell which from thence reaches my nostrils." 

The goddess and her train, having mounted the chariot, which 
was drawn by tame geese, flew over infinite regions, shedding her 
influence in due places, till at length she arrived at her beloved 
island of Britain ; but in hovering over its metropolis, what bless- 
ings did she not let fall upon her seminaries of Gresham and 
Covent-garden ! And now she reached the fatal plain of St. 
James's Library, at what time the two armies were upon the point 
to engage ; where, entering with all her caravan unseen, and 
landing upon a case of shelves, now desert, but once inhabited by 
a colony of virtuosoes, she stayed awhile to observe the posture of 
both armies. 

But here the tender cares of a mother began to fill her thoughts 
and move in her breast : for at the head of a troop of Modern 



288 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

bowmen she cast her eyes upon her son Wotton, to whom the 
fates had assigned a very short thread. Wotton, a young hero, 
whom an unknown father of mortal race begot by stolen embraces 
with this goddess. He was the darling of his mother above all 
her children, and she resolved to go and comfort him. But first, 
according to the good old custom of deities, she cast about to 
change her shape, for fear the divinity of her countenance might 
dazzle his mortal sight and overcharge the rest of his senses. 
She therefore gathered up her person into an octavo compass : 
her body grew white and arid, and split in pieces with dryness ; 
the thick turned into pasteboard, and the thin into paper ; upon 
which her parents and children artfully strewed a black juice, or 
decoction of gall and soot, in form of letters : her head, and 
voice, and spleen, kept their primitive form ; and that which 
before was a cover of skin did still continue so. In this guise she 
marched on towards the Moderns, undistinguishable in shape and 
dress from the divine Bentley, Wotton's dearest friend. " Brave 
Wotton," said the goddess, " why do our troops stand idle here, 
to spend their present vigour and opportunity of the day? away, 
let us haste to the generals, and advise to give the onset im- 
mediately." Having spoke thus, she took the ugliest of her 
monsters, full glutted from her spleen, and flung it invisibly into 
his mouth, which, flying straight up into his head, squeezed out 
his eye-balls, gave him a distorted look, and half overturned his 
brain. Then she privately ordered two of her beloved children, 
Dulness and Ill-manners, closely to attend his person in all en- 
counters. Having thus accoutred him, she vanished in a mist, 
and the hero perceived it was the goddess his mother. 

The destined hour of fate being now arrived, the fight began ; 
whereof, before I dare adventure to make a particular description, 
I must, after the example of other authors, petition for a hundred 
tongues, and mouths, and hands, and pens, which would all be 
too little to perform so immense a work. Say, goddess, that pre- 
sidest over History, who it was that first advanced in the field of 
battle ! Paracelsus, at the head of his dragoons, observing Galen 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 289 

in the adverse wing, darted his javelin with a mighty force, which 
the brave Ancient received upon his shield, the point breaking in 
the second fold. . Hie pauca 

desunt} 2 
They bore the wounded aga on their shields to his chariot . 
Desunt ....•••• 
nonnutta}* . ...•••« 

Then Aristotle, observing Bacon advance with a furious mien, 
drew his bow to the head, and let fly his arrow, which missed the 
valiant Modern and went whizzing over his head j but Descartes it 
hit ; the steel point quickly found a defect in his head-piece ; it 
pierced the leather and the pasteboard, and went in at his right 
eye. The torture of the pain whirled the valiant bowman round till 
death, like a star of superior influence, drew him into his own vortex. 
Ingens hiatus ....•••« 

hie in MS. U ...•••• 

when Homer appeared at the head of the cavalry, 
mounted on a furious horse, with difficulty managed by the rider 
himself, but which no other mortal durst approach; he rode 
among the enemy's ranks, and bore down all before him. Say, 
goddess, whom he slew first and whom he slew last ! First, Gondi- 
bert 15 advanced against him, clad in heavy armour and mounted on 
a staid sober gelding, not so famed for his speed as his docility in 
kneeling whenever his rider would mount or alight. He had made 
a vow to Pallas that he would never leave the field till he had 
spoiled Homer of his armour : madman, who had never once seen 
the wearer, nor understood his strength ! Him Homer overthrew, 
horse and man, to the ground, there to be trampled and choked 
in the dirt. Then with a long spear he slew Denham, a stout 
Modern, who from his father's side derived his lineage from 
Apollo, but his mother was of mortal race. He fell, and bit the 
earth. The celestial part Apollo took, and made it a star ; but the 
terrestrial lay wallowing upon the ground. Then Homer slew 

12 Here a little is wanting. 14 Here is a great gap in the MS. 

13 Something is -wanting. 15 Sir William Davenant, author of " Gondibert." 



290 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

Sam Wesley 16 with a kick of his horse's heel ; he took Perrault by 
mighty force out of his saddle, then hurled him at Fontenelle, 
with the same blow dashing out both their brains. 

On the left wing of the horse Virgil appeared, in shining 
armour, completely fitted to his body ; he was mounted on a 
dapple-grey steed, the slowness of whose pace was an effect of the 
hightest mettle and vigour. He cast his eye on the adverse wing, 
with a desire to find an object worthy of his valour, when behold 
upon a sorrel gelding of a monstrous size appeared a foe issuing 
from among the thickest of the enemy's squadrons ; but his speed 
was less than his noise ; for his horse, old and lean, spent the 
dregs of his strength in a high trot, which, though it made slow 
advances, yet caused a loud clashing of his armour, terrible to hear. 
The two cavaliers had now approached within the throw of a lance, 
when the stranger desired a parley, and, lifting up the vizor of his 
helmet, a face hardly appeared from within which, after a pause, 
was known for that of the renowned Dryden. The brave Ancient 
suddenly started, as one possessed with surprise and disappoint- 
ment together ; for the helmet was nine times too large for the 
head, which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the 
lady in a lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like 
a shrivelled beau from within the penthouse of a modern periwig ; 
and the voice was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote. 
Dryden, in a long harangue, soothed up the good Ancient ; called 
him Father and, by a large deduction of genealogies, made it 
plainly appear that they were nearly related. Then he humbly 
proposed an exchange of armour, as a lasting mark of hospitality 
between them. Virgil consented (for the goddess Diffidence 
came unseen, and cast a mist before his eyes), though his was of 
gold and cost a hundred beeves, the other's but of rusty iron. 
However, this glittering armour became the Modern yet worse 
than his own. Then they agreed to exchange horses ; but, when 

16 Father of John Wesley. He was known as a minor writer, but had 
published little at this time. 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 291 

it came to the trial, Dryden was afraid and utterly unable to 
mount. ...... Alter hiatus 

in MS} 1 
Lucan appeared upon a fiery horse of admirable shape, but 
headstrong, bearing the rider where he list over the field ; he 
made a mighty slaughter among the enemy's horse ; which de- 
struction to stop, Blackmore, a famous Modern (but one of the 
mercenaries), strenuously opposed himself, and darted his javelin 
with a strong hand, which, falling short of its mark, struck deep in 
the earth. Then Lucan threw a lance ; but /Esculapius came 
unseen and turned off the point. " Brave Modern," said Lucan, 
"I perceive some god protects you, for never did my arm so 
deceive me before : but what mortal can contend with a god ? 
Therefore, let us fight no longer, but present gifts to each other." 
Lucan then bestowed on the Modern a pair of spurs, and Black- 
more gave Lucan a bridle. ..... 

Pauca desunt}* ....... 

Creech : but the goddess Dulness took a cloud, formed into the 
shape of Horace, armed and mounted, and placed in a flying 
posture before him. Glad was the cavalier to begin a combat 
with a flying foe, and pursued the image, threatening aloud ; till 
at last it led him to the peaceful bower of his father, Ogleby, by 
whom he was disarmed and assigned to his repose. 

Then Pindar slew — , and — , and Oldham, and — , and Afra 19 
the Amazon, light of foot • never advancing in a direct line, but 
wheeling with incredible agility and force, he made a terrible 
slaughter among the enemy's light-horse. Him when Cowley 
observed, his generous heart burnt within him, and he advanced 
against the fierce Ancient, imitating his address, his pace, and 
career, as well as the vigour of his horse and his own skill would 
allow. When the two cavaliers had approached within the length 
of three javelins, first Cowley threw a lance, which missed Pindar, 

17 Another gap in the MS. 18 A little is wanting. 

19 Mrs. Aphra Behn, writer of dramas and tales. 



292 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

and, passing into the enemy's ranks, fell ineffectual to the ground. 
Then Pindar darted a javelin so large and weighty, that scarce a 
dozen cavaliers, as cavaliers are in our degenerate days, could 
raise it from the ground ; yet he threw it with ease, and it went, 
by an unerring hand, singing through the air ; nor could the Mod- 
ern have avoided present death if he had not luckily opposed the 
shield that had been given him by Venus. And now both heroes 
drew their swords ; but the Modern was so aghast and disordered 
that he knew not where he was; his shield dropped from his 
hands ; thrice he fled, and thrice he could not escape. At last he 
turned, and lifting up his hand in the posture of a suppliant, 
"Godlike Pindar," said he, "spare my life, and possess my horse, 
with these arms, beside the ransom which my friends will give 
when they hear I am alive and your prisoner." " Dog ! " said 
Pindar, " let your ransom stay with your friends ; but your carcase 
shall be left for the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field." 
With that he raised his sword, and, with a mighty stroke, cleft the 
wretched Modern in twain, the sword pursuing the blow ; and one 
half lay panting on the ground, to be trod in pieces by the horses' 
feet ; the other half was borne by the frightened steed through the 
field. This Venus took, washed it seven times in ambrosia, then 
struck it thrice with a sprig of amaranth ; upon which the leather 
grew round and soft, and the leaves turned into feathers, and, 
being gilded before, continued gilded still ; so it became a dove, 
and she harnessed it to her chariot. 

. Hiatus valde Je- 
. flendus in MS? 

20 A gap in the MS. very much to be lamented. 



THE BATTLE OE THE BOOKS. 293 



The Episode of Bentley and Wotton. 21 

Day being far spent, and the numerous forces of the Moderns 
half inclining to a retreat, there issued forth, from a squadron of 
their heavy-armed foot, a captain whose name was Bentley, the 
most deformed of all the Moderns ; tall, but without shape or 
comeliness ; large, but without strength or proportion. His 
armour was patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces, and the 
sound of it, as he marched, was loud and dry, like that made by 
the fall of a sheet of lead, which an Etesian wind blows suddenly 
down from the roof of some steeple. His helmet was of old rusty 
iron, but the vizor was brass, which, tainted by his breath, cor- 
rupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain, so 
that, whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous 
quality, of most malignant nature, was seen to distil from his lips. 
In his right hand he grasped a flail, and (that he might never be 
unprovided of an offensive weapon) a vessel full of [refuse] in his 
left. Thus completely armed, he advanced with a slow and heavy 
pace where the Modern chiefs were holding a consult upon the 
sum of things, who, as he came onwards, laughed to behold his 
crooked leg and humped shoulder, which his boot and armour, 
vainly endeavouring to hide, were forced to comply with and 
expose. The generals made use of him for his talents of railing, 
which, kept within government, proved frequently of great service 
to their cause, but, at other times, did more mischief than good ; 
for, at the least touch of offence, and often without any at all, he 
would, like a wounded elephant, convert it against his leaders. 
Such, at this juncture, was the disposition of Bentley, grieved to see 
the enemy prevail, and dissatisfied with everybody's conduct but 
his own. He humbly gave the Modern generals to understand 
that he conceived, with great submission, they were all a pack of 
rogues, and fools, . . . and confounded logger-heads, and illiterate 

21 William Wotton, author of " Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learn- 
ing" (1694), to the second edition of which (1697) was appended the first 
edition of Bentley's " Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris." 



294 J ON AT HAY SWIFT. 

whelps, and nonsensical scoundrels : that, if himself had been 
constituted general, those presumptuous dogs, the Ancients, would 
long before this have been beaten out of the field. " You," said 
he, " sit here idle, but when I, or any other valiant Modern kill an 
enemy, you are sure to seize the spoil. But I will not march one 
foot against the foe till you all swear to me that whomever I take 
or kill, his arms I shall quietly possess." Bentley having spoken 
thus, Scaliger, bestowing him a sour look, " Miscreant prater ! " 
said he, " eloquent only in thine own eyes, thou railest without wit, 
or truth, or discretion. The malignity of thy temper perverteth 
nature ; thy learning makes thee more barbarous ; thy study of 
humanity more inhuman ; thy converse among poets more grovel- 
ing, miry, and dull. All arts of civilizing others render thee rude 
and untractable ; courts have taught thee ill manners, and polite 
conversation has finished thee a pedant. Besides, a greater cow- 
ard burdeneth not the army. But never despond ; I pass my 
word, whatever spoil thou takest shall certainly be thy own ; 
though I hope that vile carcase will first become a prey to kites 
and worms." 

Bentley durst not reply, but, half choked with spleen and rage, 
withdrew, in full resolution of performing some great achievement. 
With him, for his aid and companion, he took his beloved Wotton, 
resolving by policy or surprise to attempt some neglected quarter 
of the ancient's army. They began their march over carcases of 
their slaughtered friends ; then to the right of their own forces ; 
then wheeled northward, till they came to Aldrovandus's tomb, 
which they passed on the side of the declining sun. And now 
they arrived, with fear, toward the enemy's outguards, looking 
about, if haply they might spy the quarters of the wounded, or 
some straggling sleepers, unarmed and remote from the rest. As 
when two mongrel curs, whom native greediness and domestic 
want provoke and join in partnership, though fearful, nightly to 
invade the fold of some rich grazier, they, with tails depressed and 
lolling tongues, creep soft and slow. Meanwhile the conscious 
moon, now in her zenith, on their guilty heads darts perpendic- 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 295 

ular rays ; nor dare they bark, though much provoked at her 
refulgent visage, whether seen in puddle by reflection or in sphere 
direct ; but one surveys the region round, while the other scouts 
the plain, if haply to discover, at distance from the flock, some 
carcase half devouVed, the refuse of gorged wolves or ominous 
ravens. So marched this lovely, loving pair of friends, nor with 
less fear and circumspection, when at a distance they might per- 
ceive two shining suits of armour hanging upon an oak, and the 
owners not far off in a profound sleep. The two friends drew 
lots, and the pursuing of this adventure fell to Bentley ; on he 
went, and in his van Confusion and Amaze, while Horrour and 
Affright brought up the rear. As he came near, behold two 
heroes of the Ancients' army, Phalaris and yEsop, lay fast asleep. 
Bentley would fain have despatched them both, and, stealing 
close, aimed his flail at Phalaris's breast ; but then the goddess 
Affright, interposing, caught the Modern in her icy arms, and 
dragged him from the danger she foresaw; both the dormant 
heroes happened to turn at the same instant, though soundly 
sleeping, and busy in a dream. For Phalaris was just that minute 
dreaming how a most vile poetaster had lampooned him, and how 
he had got him roaring in his bull. And ^Esop dreamed that, as 
he and the Ancient chiefs were lying on the ground, a wild ass 
broke loose, ran about, trampling and kicking in their faces. 
Bentley, leaving the two heroes asleep, seized on both their 
armours, and withdrew in quest of his darling Wotton. 

He, in the meantime, had wandered long in search of some en- 
terprise, till at length he arrived at a small rivulet that issued from 
a fountain hard by, called, in the language of mortal men, Heli- 
con. Here he stopped, and, parched with thirst, resolved to 
allay it in this limpid stream. Thrice with profane hands he 
essayed to raise the water to his lips, and thrice it slipped all 
through his fingers. Then he stooped prone on his breast, but, 
ere his mouth had kissed the liquid crystal, Apollo came, and in 
the channel held his shield betwixt the Modern and the fountain, 
so that he drew up nothing but mud. For, although no fountain 



296 JONATHAN SWIFT. 

on earth can compare with the clearness of Helicon, yet there 
lies at bottom a thick sediment of slime and mud ; for so Apollo 
begged of Jupiter, as a punishment to those who durst attempt to 
taste it with unhallowed lips, and for a lesson to all not to draw 
too deep or far from the spring. 

At the fountain-head Wotton discerned two heroes ; the one 
he could not distinguish, but the other was soon known for 
Temple, general of the allies to the Ancients. His back was 
turned, and he was employed in drinking large draughts in his 
helmet from the fountain, where he had withdrawn himself to rest 
from the toils of the war. Wotton, observing him, with quaking 
knees and trembling hands, spoke thus to himself : " O that I could 
kill this destroyer of our army, what renown should I purchase 
among the chiefs ! but to issue out against him, man against man, 
shield against shield, and lance against lance, what Modern of us 
dare ? for he fights like a god, and Pallas or Apollo are ever at 
his elbow. But, O mother ! if what Fame reports be true, that I 
am the son of so great a goddess, grant me to hit Temple with 
this lance, that the stroke may send him to Hell, and that I may 
return in safety and triumph, laden with his spoils." The first part 
of this prayer the gods granted at the intercession of his mother 
and of Momus ; but the rest, by a perverse wind sent from Fate, 
was scattered in the air. Then Wotton grasped his lance, and, 
brandishing it thrice over his head, darted it with all his might, 
the goddess, his mother, at the same time adding strength to his 
arm. Away the lance went hizzing, and reached even to the belt 
of the averted Ancient, upon which, lightly grazing, it fell to the 
ground. Temple neither felt the weapon touch him nor heard it 
fall ; and Wotton might have escaped to his army, with the honour 
of having remitted his lance against so great a leader unrevenged ; 
but Apollo, enraged that a javelin flung by the assistance of so 
foul a goddess should pollute his fountain, put on the shape of. 
, and softly came to young Boyle, 22 who then accompanied 

22 Charles Boyle, editor of the so-called "Epistles of Phalaris" (1695), 
which gave rise to the Boyle and Bentley Controversy. (See Jebb's " Life of 
Bentley," Chaps. V., VI.) 



THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 297 

Temple : he pointed first to the lance, then to the distant 
Modern that flung it, and commanded the young hero to take 
immediate revenge. Boyle, clad in a suit of armour, which had 
been given him by all the gods, immediately advanced against the 
trembling foe, who now fled before him. As a young lion in the 
Libyan plains, or Araby desert, sent by his aged sire to hunt for 
prey, or health, or exercise, he scours along, wishing to meet 
some tiger from the mountains, or a furious boar ; if chance a wild 
ass, with brayings importune, affronts his ear, the generous beast, 
though loathing to distain his claws with blood so vile, yet, much 
provoked at the offensive noise, which Echo, foolish nymph, like 
her ill-judging sex, repeats much louder, and with more delight 
than Philomela's song, he vindicates the honour of the forest, and 
hunts the noisy long-eared animal. So Wotton fled, so Boyle 
pursued. But Wotton, heavy-armed, and slow of foot, began to 
slack his course, when his lover Bentley appeared, returning laden 
with the spoils of the two sleeping Ancients. Boyle observed him 
well, and soon discovering the helmet and shield of Phalaris his 
friend, both which he had lately with his own hands new polished 
and gilt, rage sparkled in his eyes, and, leaving his pursuit after 
Wotton, he furiously rushed on against this new approacher. 
Fain would he be revenged on both ; but both now fled different 
ways : and, as a woman in a little house that gets a painful liveli- 
hood by spinning, if chance her geese be scattered o'er the com- 
mon, she courses round the plain from side to side, compelling 
here and there the stragglers to the flock ; they cackle loud, and 
flutter o'er the champaign ; so Boyle pursued, so fled this pair of 
friends : finding at length their flight was vain, they bravely joined, 
and drew themselves in phalanx. First Bentley threw a spear 
with all his force, hoping to pierce the enemy's breast ; but Pallas 
came unseen, and in the air took off the point, and clapped on 
one of lead, which, after a dead bang against the enemy's shield, 
fell blunted to the ground. Then Boyle, observing well his time, 
took up a lance of wondrous length and sharpness ; and, as this 
pair of friends compacted stood close side by side, he wheeled 



293 



JONATHAN SWIFT. 



him to the right, and, with unusual force, darted the weapon. 
Bentiey saw his fate approach, and flanking down his arms close 
to his ribs, hoping to save his body, in went the point, passing 
through arm and side, nor stopped or spent its force till it had 
also pierced the valiant Wotton, who, going to sustain his dying 
friend, shared his fate. As when a skilful cook has trussed a 
brace of woodcocks, he with iron skewer pierces the tender sides 
of both, their legs and wings close pinioned to the ribs ; so was 
this pair of friends transfixed, till down they fell, joined in their 
lives, joined in their deaths ; so closely joined that Charon would 
mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his 
fare. Farewell, beloved, loving pair; few equals have you left 
behind : and happy and immortal shall you be, if all my wit and 
eloquence can make you. 

And now ..... 

Dcsunt cmtera^ 



The rest is wanting. 



XV. 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 

(1672-1719.) 

SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 
1. The Coverley Papers. 

[Written in 1711-12.] 

No. 34. Monday, April 9, 171 1. 

The club of which I am a member, is very luckily composed of 
such persons as are engaged in different ways of life, and deputed 
as it were out of the most conspicuous classes of mankind. By 
this means I am furnished with the greatest variety of hints and 
materials, and know everything that passes in the different quarters 
and divisions, not only of this great city, but of the whole kingdom. 
My readers, too, have the satisfaction to find that there is no rank 
or degree among them who have not their representative in this 
club, and that there is always somebody present who will take 
care of their respective interests, that nothing may be written or 
published to the prejudice or infringement of their just rights and 
privileges. 

I last night sat very late in company with this select body of 
friends, who entertained me with several remarks which they and 
others had made upon these my speculations, as also with the 
various success which they had met with among their several ranks 
and degrees of readers. Will Honeycomb told me, in the softest 
manner he could, that there were some ladies, but for your com- 
fort, says Will, they are not those of the most wit, that were 
offended with the liberties I had taken with the opera and the 
puppet-show ; that some of them were likewise very much sur- 

299 



300 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

prised that I should think such serious points as the dress and 
equipage of persons of quality proper subjects for raillery. 

He was going on, when Sir Andrew Freeport took him up short, 
and told him that the papers he hinted at had done great good in 
the city, and that all their wives and daughters were the better for 
them ; and further added that the whole city thought themselves 
very much obliged to me for declaring my generous intentions to 
scourge vice and folly as they appear in a multitude, without con- 
descending to be a publisher of particular intrigues. ... ' In short,' 
says Sir Andrew, ' if you avoid that foolish beaten road of falling 
upon aldermen and citizens, and employ your pen upon the vanity 
and luxury of courts, your paper must needs be of general use.' 

Upon this my friend the Templar told Sir Andrew that he won- 
dered to hear a man of his sense talk after that manner ; that the 
city had always been the province for satire ; and that the wits of 
King Charles's time jested upon nothing else during his whole 
reign. He then showed, by the examples of Horace, Juvenal, 
Boileau, and the best writers of every age, that the follies of the 
stage and court had never been accounted too sacred for ridicule, 
how great soever the persons might be that patronized them. 
1 But after all,' says he, ' I think your raillery has made too great 
an excursion, in attacking several persons of the inns of court ; 
and I do not believe you can show me any precedent for your 
behaviour in that particular.' 

My good friend Sir Roger de Coverley, who had said nothing 
all this while, began his speech with a pish ! and told us, that he 
wondered to see so many men of sense so very serious upon fooleries. 
' Let our good friend,' says he, ' attack every one that deserves it ; 
I would only advise you, Mr. Spectator,' applying himself to me, 
' to take care how you meddle with country 'squires. They are 
the ornaments of the English nation ; men of good heads and 
sound bodies ! and let me tell you, some of them take it ill of you, 
that you mention fox-hunters with so little respect.' 

Captain Sentry spoke very sparingly on this occasion. What 
he said was only to commend my prudence in not touching upon 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 301 

the army, and advised me to continue to act discreetly in that 
point. 

By this time I found every subject of my speculations was 
taken away from me by one or other of the club : and began to 
think myself in the condition of the good man that had one wife 
who took a dislike to his gray hairs, and another to his black, till 
by their picking out what each of them had an aversion to, they 
left his head altogether bald and naked. 

While I was thus musing with myself, my worthy friend the 
clergyman, who, very luckily for me, was at the club that night, 
undertook my cause. He told us, that he wondered any order of 
persons should think themselves too considerable to be advised. 
That it was not quality, but innocence, which exempted men from 
reproof. That vice and folly ought to be attacked wherever they 
could be met with, and especially when they were placed in high 
and conspicuous stations of life. He further added that my 
paper would only serve to aggravate the pains of poverty, if it 
chiefly exposed those who are already depressed, and in some 
measure turned into ridicule, by the meanness of their conditions 
and circumstances. He afterwards proceeded to take notice of 
the great use this paper might be of to the public, by reprehend- 
ing those vices which are too trivial for the chastisement of the 
law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit. He 
then advised me to prosecute my undertaking with cheerfulness, 
and assured me that whoever might be displeased with me, I 
should be approved by all those whose praises do honour to the 
persons on whom they are bestowed. 

The whole club pay a particular deference to the discourse of 
this gentleman, and are drawn into what he says, as much by the 
candid ingenuous manner with which he delivers himself, as by 
the strength of argument and force of reason which he makes use 
of. Will Honeycomb immediately agreed that what he had said 
was right ; and that, for his part, he would not insist upon the 
quarter which he had demanded for the ladies. Sir Andrew gave 
up the city with the same frankness. The Templar would not 



302 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

stand out and was followed by Sir Roger and the Captafn ; who 
all agreed that I should be at liberty to carry the war into 
what quarter I pleased ; provided I continued to combat with 
criminals in a body, and to assault the vice without hurting the 
person. 

This debate, which was held for the good of mankind, put me 
in mind of that which the Roman triumvirate were formerly 
engaged in for their destruction. Every man at first stood hard 
for his friend, till they found that by this means they should spoil 
their proscription ; and at length, making a sacrifice of all their 
acquaintance and relations, furnished out a very decent execution. 

Having thus taken my resolutions to march on boldly in the 
cause of virtue and good sense, and to annoy their adversaries in 
whatever degree or rank of men they may be found ; I shall be 
deaf for the future to all the remonstrances that shall be made to 
me on this account. If Punch grows extravagant, I shall repri- 
mand him very freely. If the stage becomes a nursery of folly 
and impertinence, I shall not be afraid to animadvert upon it. 
In short, if I meet with anything in city, court, or country, that 
shocks modesty or good manners, I shall use my utmost endeav- 
ours to make an example of it. I must, however, entreat every 
particular person, who does me the honour to be a reader of this 
paper, never to think himself or any one of his friends or enemies, 
aimed at in what is said : for I promise him, never to draw a 
faulty character which does not fit at least a thousand people ; or 
to publish a single paper, that is not written in the spirit of 
benevolence, and with a love to mankind. 

No. 106. Monday, July 2, 1711. 

Having often received an invitation from my friend Sir Roger 
de Coverley to pass away a month with him in the country, I last 
week accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some 
time at his country-house, where I intend to form several of my 
ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with 
my humour, lets me rise and go to bed when I please, dine at his 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 303 

own table or in my chamber as I think fit, sit still and say nothing 
without bidding me be merry. When the gentlemen of the 
country come to see him, he only shows me at a distance. As I 
have been walking in his fields I have observed them stealing a 
sight of me over a hedge, and have heard the knight desiring 
them not to let me see them, for that I hated to be stared at. 

I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, because it consists 
of sober and staid persons ; for as the knight is the best master in 
the world, he seldom changes his servants ; and as he is beloved 
by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him : by this 
means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their 
master. You would take his valet de chambre for his brother, his 
butler is gray-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I 
have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy-coun- 
sellor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old 
house-dog, and in a gray pad 1 that is kept in the stable with great 
care and tenderness out of regard to his past services, though he 
has been useless for several years. 

I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure the joy 
that appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics 
upon my friend's arrival at his country-seat. Some of them could 
not refrain from tears at the sight of their old master ; every one 
of them pressed forward to do something for him, and seemed 
discouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the 
good old knight, with a mixture of the father and the master of 
the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with several 
kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good 
nature engages everybody to him, so that when he is pleasant 
upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so 
much as the person whom he diverts himself with : on the con- 
trary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy 
for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his 
servants. 

My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his 

1 an easy-going horse. 



304 JOSEPH ADDISOX. 

butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his 
fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they 
have often heard their master talk of me as of his particular friend. 

My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in 
the woods or the fields, is a very venerable man who is ever with 
Sir Roger, and has lived at his house in the nature of a chaplain 
above thirty years. This gentleman is a person of good sense 
and some learning, of a very regular life and obliging conversation : 
he heartily loves Sir Roger, and knows that he is very much in the 
old knight's esteem, so that he lives in the family rather as a 
relation than a dependent. 

I have observed in several of my papers, that my friend Sir 
Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is something of a humourist ; 
and that his virtues, as well as imperfections, are as it were tinged 
by a certain extravagance, which makes them particularly his, and 
distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, 
as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conver- 
sation highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree 
of sense and virtue would appear in their common and ordinary 
colours. As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I 
liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned ? and with- 
out staying for my answer told me that he was afraid of being 
insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table ; for which reason 
he desired a particular friend of his at the university to find him 
out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a 
good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and,- if possible, a 
man that understood a little of backgammon. ' My friend,' says 
Sir Roger, ' found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endow- 
ments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he 
does not show it. I have given him the parsonage of the parish ; 
and because I know his value, have settled upon him a good 
annuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that he was 
higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks he is. He has now 
been with me thirty years ; and though he does not know I have 
taken notice of it, has never in all that time asked anything of me 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 305 

for himself, though he is every day soliciting me for something in 
behalf of one or other of my tenants, his parishioners. There 
has not been a lawsuit in the parish since he has lived among 
them ; if any dispute arises they apply themselves to him for the 
decision ; if they do not acquiesce in his judgment, which I think 
never happened above once or twice at most, they appeal to me. 
At first settling with me, I made him a present of all the good 
sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of 
him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the 
pulpit. Accordingly he has digested them into such a series that 
they follow one another naturally, and make a continued system 
of practical divinity.' 

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we 
were talking of came up to us ; and upon the knight's asking him 
who preached to-morrow, for it was Saturday night, told us, the 
bishop of St. Asaph 2 in the morning, and Dr. South in the after- 
noon. He then showed us his list of preachers for the whole 
year, where I saw, with a great deal of pleasure, Archbishop 
Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with 
several living authors who have published discourses of practical 
divinity. I no sooner saw this venerable man in the pulpit, but I 
very much approved of my friend's insisting upon the qualifica- 
tions of a good aspect and a clear voice ; for I was so charmed 
with the gracefulness of his figure and delivery, as well as the 
discourses he pronounced, that I think I never passed any time 
more to my satisfaction. A sermon repeated after this manner, is 
like the composition of a poet in the mouth of a graceful actor. 

I could heartily wish that more of our country clergy would 
follow this example ; and instead of wasting their spirits in labo- 
rious compositions of their own, would endeavour after a handsome 
elocution, and all those other talents that are proper to enforce 
what has been penned by greater masters. This would not only 
be more easy to themselves, but more edifying to the people. 

2 " Dr. William Fleetwood." — Chalmers. 



306 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

No. 112. Monday, July 9,1711. 

I am always very well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, 
if keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it 
would be the best method that could have been thought of for 
the polishing and civilizing of mankind. It is certain the country 
people would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and barba- 
rians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated time, in 
which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in 
their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon indifferent 
subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in 
adoration of the Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of 
the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions 
of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing in their 
most agreeable forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to 
give them a figure in the eye of the village. A country fellow 
distinguishes himself as much in the churchyard, as a citizen does 
upon the 'Change, the whole parish politics being generally dis- 
cussed in that place either after sermon or before the bell rings. 

My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, has beautified 
the inside of his church with several texts of his own choosing. 
He has likewise given a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the 
communion-table at his own expense. He has often told me, 
that at his coming to his estate he found his parishioners very irreg- 
ular; and that in order to make them kneel and join in the 
responses, he gave every one of them a hassock and a common- 
prayer-book ; and at the same time employed an itinerant singing 
master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to instruct 
them rightly in the tunes of the Psalms ; upon which they now 
very much value themselves, and indeed outdo most of the coun- 
try churches that I have ever heard. 

As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps 
them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it 
besides himself; for if by chance he has been surprised into a short 
nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks 
about him, and if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 307 

himself, or sends his servant to them. Several other of the old 
knight's particularities break out upon these occasions. Some- 
times he will be lengthening out a verse in the singing Psalms half 
a minute after the rest of the congregation have done with it ; 
sometimes, when he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, 
he pronounces amen three or four times to the same prayer \ and 
sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their knees, to 
count the congregation, or see if any of Jiis tenants are missing. 

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old friend, in 
the midst of the service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind 
what he was about, and not to disturb the congregation. This 
John Matthews it seems is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and 
at that time was kicking his heels for his diversion. This authority 
of the knight, though exerted in that odd manner which accom- 
panies him in all circumstances of life, has a very good effect upon 
the parish, who are not polite enough to see any thing ridiculous 
in his behaviour • besides that the general good sense and worthi- 
ness of his character make his friends observe these little singulari- 
ties as foils that rather set off than blemish his good qualities. 

As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody presumes to stir till 
Sir Roger is gone out of the church. The knight walks down from 
his seat in the chancel between a double row of his tenants, that 
stand bowing to him on each side; and every now and then 
inquires how such a one's wife, or mother or son, or father do, 
whom he does not see at church ; which is understood as a secret 
reprimand to the person that is absent. 

The chaplain has often told me, that upon a catechising day, 
when Sir Roger has been pleased with a boy that answers well, he 
has ordered a bible to be given him next day for his encourage- 
ment ; and sometimes accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to his 
mother. Sir Roger has likewise added five pounds a year to the 
clerk's place ; and that he may encourage the young fellows to 
make themselves perfect in the church service, has promised, upon 
the death of the present incumbent, who is very old, to bestow 
it according to merit. 



308 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

The fair understanding between Sir Roger and his chaplain, and 
their mutual concurrence in doing good, is the more remarkable, 
because the very next village is famous for the differences and 
contentions that rise between the parson and the 'squire, who live 
in a perpetual state of war. The parson is always preaching at 
the 'squire ; and the 'squire, to be revenged on the parson, never 
comes to church. 

The 'squire has made all his tenants atheists and tithe-stealers ; 
while the parson instructs them every Sunday in the dignity of his 
order, and insinuates to them, in almost every sermon, that he is a 
better man than his patron. In short, matters are come to such an 
extremity, that the 'squire has not said his prayers either in public 
or private this half year ; and that the parson threatens him, if he 
does not mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of the 
whole congregation. 

Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the country, are 
very fatal to the ordinary people ; who are so used to be dazzled 
with riches, that they pay as much deference to the understanding 
of a man of an estate, as of a man of learning • and are very 
hardly brought to regard any truth, how important soever it may 
be, that is preached to them, when they know there are several 
men of five hundred a year who do not believe it. 

No. 122. Friday, July 20, 171 1. 

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own 
heart ; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last 
interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected ; but 
otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind 
than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by 
the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct, 
when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus 
warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him. 

My worthy friend Sir Roger is one of those who is not only at 
peace within himself, but beloved and esteemed by all about him. 
He receives a suitable tribute for his universal benevolence to 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 309 

mankind, in the returns of affection and good-will, which are 
paid him by every one that lives within his neighbourhood. I 
lately met with two or three odd instances of that general respect 
which is shown to the good old knight. He would needs carry 
Will Wimble and myself with him into the country assizes. As we 
were upon the road Will Wimble joined a couple of plain men 
who rid before us, and conversed with them for some time \ during 
which my friend Sir Roger acquainted me with their characters. 

' The first of them,' says he, ' that has a spaniel by his side, is a 
yeoman of about a hundred pounds a year, an honest man. He is 
just within the game -act, and qualified to kill a hare or a pheasant. 
He knocks down a dinner with a gun twice or thrice a week ; and 
by that means lives much cheaper than those who have not so 
good an estate as himself. He would be a good neighbour if he 
did not destroy so many partridges. In short, he is a very sensible 
man ; shoots flying, and has been several times foreman of the 
petty-jury. 

' The other that rides along with him is Tom Touchy, a fellow 
famous for " taking the law " of everybody. There is not one in 
the town where he lives that he has not sued at a quarter sessions. 
The rogue had once the impudence to go to law with the Widow. 
His head is full of costs, damages, and ejectments. He plagued a 
couple of honest gentlemen so long for a trespass in breaking one 
of his hedges, till he was forced to sell the ground it inclosed to 
defray the charges of the prosecution; his father left him four- 
score pounds a year ; but he has cast and been cast so often, that 
he is not now worth thirty. I suppose he is going upon the old 
business of the willow-tree.' 

As Sir Roger was giving me this account of Tom Touchy, Will 
Wimble and his two companions stopped short till we came up to 
them. After having paid their respects to Sir Roger, Will told 
him that Mr. Touchy and he must appeal to him upon a dispute 
that arose between them. Will, it seems, had been giving his 
fellow-travellers an account of his angling one day in such a hole : 
when Tom Touchy, instead of hearing out his story, told him that 



310 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

Mr. Such-a-One, if he pleased, might ' take the law of him,' for 
fishing in that part of the river. My friend Sir Roger heard them 
both, upon a round trot ; and, after having paused some time, told 
them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgment 
rashly, that ' much might be said on both sides.' They were 
neither of them dissatisfied with the knight's determination, 
because neither of them found himself in the wrong by it. Upon 
which we made the best of our way to the assizes. 

The court was sat before Sir Roger came ; but notwithstanding 
all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made 
room for the old knight at the head of them ; who for his reputa- 
tion in the country took occasion to whisper in the judge's ear, that 
he was glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in 
his circuit. I was listening to the proceedings of the court with 
much attention, and infinitely pleased with that great appearance 
of solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public admin- 
istration of our laws ; when, after about an hour's sitting, I observed, 
to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir 
Roger was getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I 
found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences with a 
look of much business and great intrepidity. 

Upon his first rising the court was hushed, and a general whis- 
per ran among the country people that Sir Roger ' was up.' The 
speech he made was so little to the purpose that I shall not trouble 
my readers with an account of it ; and I believe was not so much 
designed by the knight himself to inform the court, as to give him 
a figure in my eye, and keep up his credit in the country. 

I was highly delighted, when the court rose, to see the gentle- 
men of the country gather about my old friend, and striving who 
should compliment him most ; at the same time that the ordinary 
people gazed upon him at a distance, not a little admiring his 
courage, that was not afraid to speak to the judge. 

In our return home we met with a very odd accident ; which I 
cannot forbear relating, because it shows how desirous all who 
know Sir Roger are of giving him marks of their esteem. When 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 3H 

we were arrived upon the verge of his estate, we stopped at a little 
inn to rest ourselves and our horses. The man of the house had, 
it seems, been formerly a servant in the knight's family; and to do 
honour to his old master, had some time since, unknown to Sir 
Roger, put him up in a sign-post before the door • so that the 
knight's head had hung out upon the road about a week before 
he himself knew anything of the matter. As soon as Sir Roger 
was acquainted with it, finding that his servant's indiscretion pro- 
ceeded wholly from affection and good- will, he only told him that 
he had made him too high a compliment ; and when the fellow 
seemed to think that could hardly be, added with a more decisive 
look, that it was too great an honour for any man under a duke ■ 
but told him at the same time, that it might be altered with a very 
few touches, and that he himself would be at the charge of it. 
Accordingly they got a painter by the knight's directions to add a 
pair of whiskers to the face, and, by a little aggravation of the fea- 
tures, to change it into the Saracen's Head. I should not have 
known this story had not the inn-keeper, upon Sir Roger's 
alighting, told him in my hearing, that his honour's head was 
brought back last night with the alterations that he had ordered to 
be made in it. Upon this my friend, with his usual cheerfulness, 
related the particulars above mentioned, and ordered the head to 
be brought into the room. I could not forbear discovering greater 
expressions of mirth than ordinary upon the appearance of this 
monstrous face, under which, notwithstanding it was made to 
frown and stare in a most extraordinary manner, I could still dis- 
cover a distant resemblance of my old friend. Sir Roger, upon 
seeing me laugh, desired me to tell him truly if I thought it possi- 
ble for people to know him in that disguise. I at first kept my 
usual silence ; but upon the knight's conjuring me to tell him 
whether it was not still more like himself than a Saracen, I com- 
posed my countenance in the best manner I could, and replied, 
that * much might be said on both sides.' 

These several adventures, with the knight's behaviour in them, 
gave me as pleasant a day as ever I met with in any of my travels. 



312 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

No. 131. Tuesday, July 31, 1711. 

It is usual for a man who loves country sports to preserve the 
game in his own grounds, and divert himself upon those that 
belong to his neighbour. My friend Sir Roger generally goes two 
or three miles from his house, and gets into the frontiers of his 
estate, before he beats about in search of a hare or partridge, on 
purpose to spare his own fields, where he is always sure of finding 
diversion, when the worst comes to the worst. By this means the 
breed about his house has time to increase and multiply, besides that 
the sport is more agreeable where the game is the harder to come at, 
and where it does not lie so thick as to produce any perplexity or 
confusion in the pursuit. For these reasons the country gentle- 
man, like the fox, seldom preys near his own home. 

In the same manner I have made a month's excursion out of 
the town, which is the great field of game for sportsmen of my 
species, to try my fortune in the country, where I have started 
several subjects, and hunted them down, with some pleasure to 
myself, and I hope to others. I am here forced to use a great 
deal of diligence before I can spring anything to my mind, where- 
as in town, whilst I am following one character, it is ten to one 
but I am crossed in my way by another, and put up such a variety of 
odd creatures in both sexes, that they foil the scent of one another, 
and puzzle the chase. My greatest difficulty in the country is to 
find sport, and in town to choose it. In the mean time, as I have 
given a whole month's rest to the cities of London and Westmin- 
ster, I promise myself abundance of new game upon my return 
thither. 

It is indeed high time for me to leave the country, since I find 
the whole neighbourhood begin to grow very inquisitive after my 
name and character ; my love of solitude, taciturnity, and partic- 
ular way of life, having raised a great curiosity in all these parts. 

The notions which have been framed of me are various ; some 
look upon me as very proud, some as very modest, and some as 
very melancholy. Will Wimble, as my friend the butler tells me, 
observing me very much alone, and extremely silent when I am in 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 313 

company, is afraid I have killed a man. The country people seem 
to suspect me for a conjurer; and some of them, hearing of the 
visit which I made to Moll White, will needs have it that Sir 
Roger has brought down a cunning man with him, to cure the old 
woman, and free the country from her charms. So that the char- 
acter which I go under in part of the neighbourhood, is what they 
here call a White Witch. 

A justice of peace, who lives about five miles off, and is not of 
Sir Roger's party, has it seems said twice or thrice at his table, 
that he wishes Sir Roger does not harbour a Jesuit in his house, 
and that he thinks the gentlemen of the country would do very 
well to make me give some account of myself. 

On the other side, some of Sir Roger's friends are afraid the old 
knight is imposed upon by a designing fellow ; and as they have 
heard that he converses very promiscuously when he is in town, 
do not know but he has brought down with him some discarded 
Whig, that is sullen, and says nothing because he is out of place. 

Such is the variety of opinions which are here entertained of 
me, so that I pass among some for a disaffected person, and 
among others for a popish priest ; among some for a wizard, and 
among others for a murderer ; and all this for no other reason that 
I can imagine, but because I do not hoot, and halloo, and make 
a noise. It is true, my friend Sir Roger tells them, — ' That it is 
my way,' and that I am only a philosopher; but this will not 
satisfy them. They think there is more in me than he discovers, 
and that I do not hold my tongue for nothing. 

For these and other reasons I shall set out for London to-mor- 
row, having found by experience that the country is not a place 
for a person of my temper, who does not love jollity, and what 
they call good neighbourhood. A man that is out of humour when 
an unexpected guest breaks in upon him, and does not care for 
sacrificing an afternoon to every chance-comer, that will be the 
master of his own time, and the pursuer of his own inclinations, 
makes but a very unsociable figure in this kind of life. I shall 
therefore retire into the town, if I may make use of that phrase, 



314 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

and get into the crowd again as fast as I can, in order to be alone. 
I can there raise what speculations I please upon others without 
being observed myself, and at the same time enjoy all the advan- 
tages of company, with all the privileges of solitude. In the 
mean while, to finish the month, and conclude these my rural 
speculations, I shall here insert a letter from my friend Will 
Honeycomb, who has not lived a month for these forty years out 
of the smoke of London, and rallies me after his way upon my 
country life. 

" Dear Spec, 

" I suppose this letter will find thee picking of daisies, or smelling 
to a lock of hay, or passing away thy time in some innocent coun- 
try diversion of the like nature. I have, however, orders from the 
club to summon thee up to town, being all of us cursedly afraid 
thou wilt not be able to relish our company, after thy conversations 
with Moll White, and Will Wimble. Pr'ythee do not send us up 
any more stories of a cock and a bull, nor frighten the town with 
spirits and witches. Thy speculations begin to smell confoundedly 
of woods and meadows. If thou dost not come up quickly, we 
shall conclude that thou art in love with one of Sir Roger's dairy- 
maids. Service to the knight. Sir Andrew is grown the cock of 
the club since he left us, and if he does not return quickly, will 
make every mother's son of us commonwealth's-men. 
" Dear Spec, 

" thine eternally, 

"Will Honeycomb." 



2. The English Tongue. 
No. 135. Saturday, August 4, 1711. 

I have somewhere read of an eminent person, who used in his 
private offices of devotion to give thanks to heaven that he was 
born a Frenchman ; for my own part, I look upon it as a peculiar 
blessing that I was born an Englishman. Among many other 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 315 

reasons, I think myself very happy in my country, as the language 
of it is wonderfully adapted to a man who is sparing of his words, 
and an enemy to loquacity. 

As I have frequently reflected on my good fortune in this par- 
ticular, I shall communicate to the public my speculations upon 
the English tongue, not doubting but they will be acceptable to 
all my curious readers. 

The English delight in silence more than any other European 
nation, if the remarks which are made on us by foreigners are 
true. Our discourse is not kept up in conversation, but falls into 
more pauses and intervals than in our neighbouring countries ; as 
it is observed, that the matter of our writings is thrown much 
closer together, and lies in a narrower compass than is usual in the 
works of foreign authors ; for, to favour our natural taciturnity, 
when we are obliged to utter our thoughts, we do it in the shortest 
way we are able, and give as quick a birth to our conceptions as 
possible. 

This humour shows itself in several remarks that we may make 
upon the English language. As first of all by its abounding in 
monosyllables, which gives us an opportunity of delivering our 
thoughts in few sounds. This indeed takes off from the elegance 
of our tongue, but at the same time expresses our ideas in the 
readiest manner, and consequently answers the first design of 
speech better than the multitude of syllables, which make the 
words of other languages more tunable and sonorous. The sounds 
of our English words are commonly like those of string music, 
short and transient, which rise and perish upon a single touch ; 
those of other languages are like the notes of wind instruments, 
sweet and swelling, and lengthened out into variety of modulation. 

In the next place we may observe that, where the words are 
not monosyllables, we often make them so, as much as lies in our 
power, by our rapidity of pronunciation ; as it generally happens 
in most of our long words which are derived from the Latin, where 
we contract the length of the syllables that give them a grave 
and solemn air in their own language, to make them more proper 



316 JOSEPH A DDLS OX. 

for despatch, and more conformable to the genius of our tongue. 
This we may find in a multitude of words, as ' liberty, conspiracy, 
theatre, orator,' &c. 

The same natural aversion to loquacity has of late years made 
a very considerable alteration in our language, by closing in one 
syllable the termination of our praeter-perfect tense, as in the 
words ' drown'd, walk'd, arriv'd,' for ' drowned, walked, arrived,' 
which has very much disfigured the tongue, and turned a tenth 
part of our smoothest words into so many clusters of consonants. 
This is the more remarkable, because the want of vowels in our 
language has been the general complaint of our politest authors, 
who nevertheless are the men that have made these retrench- 
ments, and consequently very much increased our former scarcity. 

This reflection on the words that end in ed, I have heard in 
conversation from one of the greatest geniuses this age has pro- 
duced. 3 I think we may add to the foregoing observation, the 
change which has happened in our language, by the abbrevia- 
tion of several words that are terminated in ' eth,' by substitut- 
ing an ' s ' in the room of the last syllable, as in ' drowns, walks, 
arrives,' and innumerable other words, which in the pronunciation 
of our forefathers were ' drowneth, walketh, arriveth.' This has 
wonderfully multiplied a letter which was before too frequent in 
the English tongue, and added to that hissing in our language, 
which is taken so much notice of by foreigners ; but at the same 
time humours our taciturnity, and eases us of many superfluous 
syllables. 

I might here observe that the same single letter on many 
occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the 
'his' and ' her ' of our forefathers. There is no doubt but the ear 
of a foreigner, which is the best judge in this case, would very 
much disapprove of such innovations, which indeed we do our- 
selves in some measure, by retaining the old termination in writ- 
ing, and in all the solemn offices of our religion. 

As in the instances I have given we have epitomized many of 

3 "Probably Dean Swift." — Chalmers. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 317 

our particular words to the detriment of our tongue, so on other 
occasions we have drawn two words into one, which has likewise 
very much untuned our language, and clogged it with consonants, 
as ' mayn't, can't, sha'n't, won't,' and the like, for ' may not, can 
not, shall not, will not,' &c. 

It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more than we needs 
must, which has so miserably curtailed some of our words that in 
familiar writings and conversation they often lose all but their first 
syllables, as in ' mob., rep., pos., incog.' and the like ; and as all 
ridiculous words make their first entry into a language by familiar 
phrases, I dare not answer for these, that they will not in time be 
looked upon as a part of our tongue. | We see some of our poets 
have been so indiscreet as to imitate Hudibras's doggerel expres- 
sions in their serious compositions, by throwing out the signs of 
our substantives which are essential to the English language.' Nay, 
this humour of shortening our language had once run so far that 
some of our celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon Sir 
Roger L' Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all 
superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the 
spelling to the pronunciation ; which would have confounded all 
our etymologies, and have quite destroyed our tongue. 

We may here likewise observe that our proper names, when 
familiarized in English, generally dwindle to monosyllables, whereas 
in other modern languages they receive a softer turn on this occa- 
sion by the addition of a new syllable. — Nick, in Italian, is Nico- 
lini ; Jack, in French, Janot ; and so of the rest. 

There is another particular in our language which is a great 
instance of our frugality of words, and that is the suppressing of 
several particles which must be produced in other tongues to make 
a sentence intelligible. This often perplexes the best writers, 
when they find the relatives 'whom, which, or they,' at their 
mercy, whether they may have admission or not ; and will never be 
decided till we have something like an academy, that by the best 
authorities and rules drawn from the analogy of languages shall 
settle all controversies between grammar and idiom. 



318 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

I have only considered our language as it shows the genius and 
natural temper of the English, which is modest, thoughtful, and 
sincere, and which, perhaps, may recommend the people, though 
it has spoiled the tongue. We might, perhaps, carry the same 
thought into other languages, and deduce a great part of what is 
peculiar to them from the genius of the people who speak them. 
It is certain, the light talkative humour of the French has not a 
little infected their tongue, which might be shown by many 
instances ; as the genius of the Italians, which is so much addicted 
to music and ceremony, has moulded all their words and phrases 
to those particular uses. The stateliness and gravity of the Span- 
iards shows itself to perfection in the solemnity of their language ; 
and the blunt honest humour of the Germans sounds better in the 
roughness of the High-Dutch, than it would in a politer tongue. 

3. Criticism on Milton's Paradise Lost. 

No. 291. Saturday, February 2, 1712. 

I have now consider'd Milton's Paradise Lost under those four 
great Heads of the Fable, the Characters, the Sentiments, and the 
Language ; and have shewn that he excels, in general, under each 
of these Heads. I hope that I have made several Discoveries 
that [which] 4 may appear new, even to those who are versed in 
Critical Learning. Were I indeed to chuse my Readers, by 
whose Judgment I would stand or fall, they should not be such 
as are acquainted only with the French and Italian Criticks, but 
also with the Ancient and Moderns who have written in either of 
the learned Languages. Above all, I would have them well versed 
in the Greek and Latin Poets, without which a Man very often 
fancies that he understands a Critick, when in reality he does not 
comprehend his Meaning. 

It is in Criticism, as in all other Sciences and Speculations ; one 
who brings with him any implicit Notions and Observations which 
he has made in his reading of the Poets, will find his own Refiec- 

4 " Variations of the second edition." — Arber. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 319 

tions methodized and explained, and perhaps several little Hints 
that had passed in his Mind, perfected and improved in the Works 
of a good Critick ; whereas one who has not these previous Lights, 
is very often an utter Stranger to what he reads, and apt to put 
a wrong Interpretation upon it. 

Nor is it sufficient, that a Man who sets up for a Judge in Crit- 
icism, should have perused the Authors above-mentioned, unless 
he has also a clear and Logical Head. Without this Talent he is 
perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his own Blunders, mis- 
takes the sense of those he would confute, or if he chances to 
think right, does not know how to convey his Thoughts to another 
with Clearness and Perspicuity. Aristotle, who was the best Crit- 
ick, was also one of the best Logicians that ever appeared in the 
World. 

Mr. Lock's Essay on Human Understanding would be thought a 
very odd Book for a Man to make himself Master of, who would 
get a Reputation by Critical Writings ; though at the same time it 
is very certain, that an Author who has not learn'd the Art of 
distinguishing between Words and Things, and of ranging his 
Thoughts, and setting them in proper Lights, whatever Notions he 
may have, will lose himself in Confusion and Obscurity. I might 
further observe, that there is not a Greek or Latin Critick, who 
has not shewn, even in the style of his Criticisms, that he was a 
Master of all the Elegance and Delicacy of his Native Tongue. 

The truth of it is, there is nothing more absurd, than for a Man 
to set up for a Critick, without a good Insight into all the Parts of 
Learning ; whereas many of those who have endeavoured to sig- 
nalize themselves by Works of this Nature among our English 
Writers, are not only defective in the above-mentioned Particu- 
lars, but plainly discover by the Phrases which they make use of, 
and by their confused way of thinking, that they are not acquainted 
with the most common and ordinary Systems of Arts and Sciences. 
A few general Rules extracted out of the French Authors, with a 
certain Cant of Words, has sometimes set up an Illiterate heavy 
Writer for a most judicious and formidable Critick. 



320 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

One great Mark, by which you may discover a Critick who has 
neither Taste nor Learning, is this, that he seldom ventures to 
praise any Passage in an Author which has not been before re- 
ceived and applauded by the Publick, and that his Criticism turns 
wholly upon little Faults and Errors. This part of a Critick is so 
very easie to succeed in, that we find every ordinary Reader, upon 
the publishing of a new Poem, has Wit and Ill-nature enough to 
turn several Passages of it into Ridicule, and very often in the 
right Place. This Mr. Dryden has very agreeably remarked in 
those two celebrated Lines, 

Errors, like Straws, upon the Surface florv ; 

lie who would search for /'earls must dive below. 

A true Critick ought to dwell rather upon Excellencies than 
Imperfections, to discover the concealed Beauties of a Writer, and 
communicate to the World such things as are worth their Observa- 
tion. The most exquisite Words and finest Strokes of an Author 
are those which very often appear the most doubtful and excep- 
tionable, to a Man who wants a Relish for polite Learning ; and 
they are these, which a sower [soure] undistinguishing Critick gen- 
erally attacks with the greatest Violence. Tutty observes, that it is 
very easie to brand or fix a Mark upon what he calls Verbum 
ardens, or, as it may be rendered into English, a glowing bold 
Expression, and to turn it into Ridicule by a cold, ill-natured 
Criticism. A little Wit is equally capable of exposing a Beauty, 
and of aggravating a Fault ; and though such a Treatment of an 
Author naturally produces Indignation in the Mind of an under- 
standing Reader, it has however its effect among the generality of 
those whose Hands it falls into, the Rabble of Mankind being 
very apt to think that everything which is laughed at with any 
mixture of Wit, is ridiculous in it self. 

Such a Mirth as this, is always unseasonable in a Critick, as it 
rather prejudices the Reader than convinces him, and is capable 
of making a Beauty, as well as a Blemish, the subject of Derision. 
A Man who cannot write with Wit on a proper Subject, is dull 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 321 

and stupid, but one who shews it in an improper place, is as im- 
pertinent and absurd. Besides, a Man who has the gift of Rid- 
icule is very * 5 apt to find Fault with anything that gives him an 
Opportunity of exerting his beloved Talent, and very often cen- 
sures a Passage, not because there is any Fault in it, but because 
he can be merry upon it. Such kinds of Pleasantry are very 
unfair and disingenuous in Works of Criticism, in which the 
greatest Masters, both Ancient and Modern, have always ap- 
peared with a serious and instructive Air. 

As I intend in my next Paper to show the Defects in Mi/ton's 
Paradise Lost, I thought fit to premise these few Particulars, to 
the End that the Reader may know I enter upon it, as on a very 
ungrateful Work, and that I shall just point at the Imperfections, 
without endeavouring to inflame them with Ridicule. I must also 
observe with Longinus, that the Productions of a great Genius, 
with many Lapses and Inadvertencies, are infinitely preferable to 
the Works of an inferior kind of author, which are scrupulously 
exact and conformable to all the Rules of correct Writing. 

I shall conclude my Paper with a Story out of Boccalini, which 
sufficiently shews us the Opinion that Judicious Author entertained 
of the sort of Criticks I have been here mentioning. A famous 
Critick, says he, having gathered together all the Faults of an 
Eminent Poet, made a Present of them to Apollo, who received 
them very graciously, and resolved to make the Author a suitable 
Return for the Trouble he had been at in collecting them. In 
order to this, he set before him a Sack of Wheat, as it had been 
just threshed out of the Sheaf. He then bid him pick out the 
Chaff from among the Corn, and lay it aside by it self. The Crit- 
ick applied himself to the Task with great Industry and Pleasure, 
and after having made the due Separation, was presented by Apollo 
with the Chaff for his Pains. 

5 " Words in the first, omitted in the second edition." — Arber. 



322 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

No. 297. Saturday, February 9, 1712. 

After what I have said in my last Saturday's Paper, I shall 
enter on the Subject of this without farther Preface, and remark 
the several Defects which appear in the Fable, the Characters, the 
Sentiments, and the Language of Milton's Paradise Lost ; not 
doubting but the reader will pardon me, if I alledge at the same 
time whatever may be said for the Extenuation of such Defects. 
The first Imperfection which I shall observe in the Fable is, that 
the Event of it is unhappy. 

The Fable of every Poem is according to Aristotle's Division 
either Simple or Implex. 6 It is called Simple when there is no 
change of Fortune in it, Implex when the Fortune of the chief 
Actor changes from Bad to Good, or from Good to Bad. The 
Implex Fable is thought the most perfect ; I suppose, because it 
is most proper to stir up the Passions of the Reader, and to sur- 
prise him with a great variety of Accidents. 

The Implex Fable is therefore of two kinds : In the first the 
chief Actor makes his way through a long Series of Dangers and 
Difficulties, 'till he arrives at Honour and Prosperity, as we see in 
the Stories [Story] 4 of Ulysses and *^Eneas* 5 In the second, the 
chief Actor in the Poem falls from some eminent pitch of Honour 
and Prosperity, into Misery and Disgrace. Thus we see Adam 
and Eve sinking from a state of Innocence and Happiness, into 
the most abject Condition of Sin and Sorrow. 

The most taking Tragedies among the Ancients were built on 
this last sort of Implex Fable, particularly the Tragedy of CEdipus 
which proceeds upon a Story, if we may believe Aristotle, the most 
proper for Tragedy that could be invented by the Wit of Man. I 
have taken some pains in a former Paper to shew, that this kind 
of Implex Fable, wherein the Event is unhappy, is more apt to 
affect an Audience than that of the first kind ; notwithstanding 
many excellent Pieces among the Ancients, as well as most of 
those which have been written of late Years in our own Country, 
are raised upon contrary Plans. I must however own, that I 

6 involved. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 323 

think this kind of Fable, which is the most perfect in Tragedy, is 
not so proper for an Heroic Poem. 

Milton seems to have been sensible of this Imperfection in his 
Fable, and has therefore endeavoured to cure it by several Ex- 
pedients ; particularly by the Mortification which the great Adver- 
sary of Mankind meets with upon his return to the Assembly of 
Infernal Spirits, as it is described in that [a] beautiful Passage of 
the tenth Book ; and likewise by the Vision, wherein Adam at the 
close of the Poem sees his Offspring triumphing over his great 
Enemy, and himself restored to a happier Paradise than that from 
which he fell. 

There is another Objection against Mi/ion's Fable, which is 
indeed almost the same with the former, tho' placed in a different 
Light, namely, That the Hero in the Paradise Lost is unsuccessful, 
and by no means a Match for his Enemies. This gave occasion 
to Mr. Dryden's Reflection, that the Devil was in reality Mi/ton's 
Hero. I think I have obviated this Objection in my first Paper. 
The Paradise Lost is an Epic, [or a] Narrative Poem ; he that 
looks for an Hero in it, searches for that which Milton never in- 
tended ; but if he will needs fix the Name of an Hero upon any 
Person in it, 'tis certainly the Messiah who is the Hero, both in 
the Principal Action, and in the [chief] Episode [s]. Paganism 
could not furnish out a real Action for a Fable greater than that 
of the Lliad or AL?ieid, and therefore an Heathen could not form 
a higher Notion of a Poem than one of that kind, which they call 
an Heroic. Whether Milton\ is not of a greater [sublimer] 
Nature, I will not presume to determine ; it is sufficient that I 
shew there is in the Paradise Lost all the Greatness of Plan, 
Regularity of Design, and masterly Beauties which we discover 
in Homer and Virgil. 

I must, in the next Place, observe that Milton has interwoven in 
the Texture of his Fable some Particulars which do not seem to 
have Probability enough for an Epic Poem, particularly in the 
Actions which he ascribes to Sin and Death, and the Picture 
which he draws of the Lymbo of Vanity, with other Passages in 



324 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

the second Book. Such Allegories rather savour of the Spirit of 
Spencer and Ariosto, than of Homer and Virgil. 

In the Structure of his Poem he has likewise admitted of too 
many Digressions. It is finely observed by Aristotle, that the 
Author of an Historic Poem should seldom speak himself, but 
throw as much of his Work as he can into the Mouths of those 
who are his Principal Actors. Aristotle has given no Reason for 
this Precept ; but I presume it is because the Mind of the Reader 
is more awed and elevated when he hears AZneas or Achilles 
speak, than when Virgil or Homer talk in their own Persons. 
Besides that assuming the Character of an eminent Man is apt to 
fire the Imagination, and raise the Ideas of the Author. Tully 
tells us, mentioning his Dialogue of Old Age, in which Cato is the 
chief Speaker, that upon a Review of it he was agreeably im- 
posed upon, and fancied that it was Cato, and not he himself, 
who utter'd his Thoughts on that Subject. 

If the Reader would be at the pains to see how the Story of the 
Iliad and the ^Eneid is delivered by those Persons who act in it, 
he will be surprized to find how little in either of these Poems 
proceeds from the Authors. Milton has, in the general dispo- 
sition of his Fable, very finely observed this great Rule ; inso- 
much that there is scarce a third part of it which comes from the 
Poet ; the rest is spoken either by Adam and Eve, or by some 
Good or Evil Spirit who is engaged either in their Destruction or 
Defence. 

From what has been here observed it appears, that Digressions 
are by no means to be allowed of in an Epic Poem. If the Poet, 
even in the ordinary course of his Narration, should speak as little 
as possible, he should certainly never let his Narration sleep for 
the sake of any Reflections of his own. I have often observed, 
with a secret Admiration, that the longest Reflection in the ALneid 
is in that Passage of the Tenth Book, where Turnns is represent 
[ed] as dressing himself in the Spoils of Pallas, whom he had 
Slain. Virgil here lets his Fable stand still for the sake of the fol- 
lowing Remark. How is the Mind of Man ignorant of Futurity, 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 325 

and unable to bear prosperous Fortune with Moderation ? The 
time will come when Turnus shall wish that he had left the Body 
of Pallas untouched, and curse the Day on which he dressed him- 
self in these Spoils. 1 As the great Event of the sEneid, and the 
Death of Turnus, whom sEneas slew because he saw him adorned 
with the Spoils of Pallas, turns upon this Incident, Virgil went out 
of his way to make this Reflection upon it, without which so small 
a Circumstance might possibly have slipped out of his Reader's 
Memory. Lucan, who was an Injudicious Poet, lets drop his 
Story very frequently for the sake of [his] unnecessary Digressions, 
or his Diverticula, as Scaliger calls them. If he gives us an 
Account of the Prodigies which preceded the Civil War, he de- 
claims upon the Occasion, and shews how much happier it would 
be for Man, if he did not feel his Evil Fortune before it comes to 
pass, and surfer not only by its real Weight, but by the Apprehen- 
sion of it. Milton's Complaint of his Blindness, his Panegyrick 
on Marriage, his Reflections on Adam and Eve's going naked, of 
the Angels eating, and several other Passages in his Poem, are 
liable to the same Exception, tho' I must confess there is so great 
a Beauty in these very Digressions, that I would not wish them 
out of his Poem. 

I have, in a former Paper, spoken of the Characters of Milton's 
Paradise Lost, and declared my Opinion as to the Allegorical 
Persons who are introduced in it. 

If we look into the Sentiments, I think they are sometimes 
defective under the following Heads ; First, as there are some 
[several] of them too much pointed, and some that degenerate 
even into Puns. Of this last kind I am afraid is that in the First 
Book, where, speaking of the Pigmies, he calls them 

. . . The small Infantry 
Warr'd on by Cranes. . . . 

Another Blemish that appears in some of his Thoughts, is his 
frequent Allusions to Heathen Fables, which are not certainly of 

7 Virgil, ALneid, X. 501-5. 



326 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

a Piece with the Divine Subject of which he treats. I do not 
find fault with these Allusions, where the Poet himself represents 
them as fabulous, as he does in some Places, but where he men- 
tions them as Truths and Matters of Fact. The Limits of my 
Paper will not give me leave to be particular in Instances of this 
kind : The Reader will easily remark them in his Perusal of the 
Poem. 

A Third Fault in his Sentiments, is an unnecessary Ostentation 
of Learning, which likewise occurs very frequently. It is certain 
that both Homer and Virgil were Masters of all the Learning of 
their Times, but it shews it self in their Works after an indirect 
and concealed manner. Milton seems ambitious of letting us 
know, by his Excursions on Free-will and Predestination, and 
his many Glances upon History, Astronomy, Geography and the 
like, as well as by the Terms and Phrases he sometimes makes 
use of, that he was acquainted with the whole Circle of Arts and 
Sciences. 

If, in the last place, we consider the Language of this great 
Poet, we must allow what I have hinted in a former Paper, that it 
is [often] too much laboured, and sometimes obscured by old 
Words, Transpositions, and Foreign Idioms. Seneca's Objection 
to the Stile of a great Author, Riget ejus oratio, nihil in cd placi- 
dum, nihil lene, 8 is what many Criticks make to Milton: as I 
cannot wholly refute it, so I have already apologized for it in 
another Paper ; to which I may further add, that Milton's Senti- 
ments and Ideas were so wonderfully Sublime, that it would have 
been impossible for him to have represented them in their full 
Strength and Beauty, without having recourse to these Foreign 
Assistances. Our Language sunk under him, and was unequal to 
that greatness of Soul, which furnished him with such glorious 
Conceptions. 

A second Fault in his Language is, that he often affects a kind 
of Jingle in his Words, as in the following Passages, and many 
others : 
S His language is stiff; there is nothing in it smooth, nothing gentle. — Seneca. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 327 

And brought into the World a World of woe. 

. . . Begirt ttt Almighty Throne 

Beseeching or besieging . . . 

This tempted our attempt . . . 

At one Slight bound high overleapt all bound. 

I know there are Figures of this kind of Speech, that some of 
the greatest Ancients have been guilty of it, and that Aristotle 
himself has given.it a place in his Rhetorick among the Beauties 
of that Art. But as it is in itself poor and trifling, it is I think at 
present universally exploded by all the Masters of polite Writing. 

The last Fault which I shall take notice of in Milton's Stile, is 
the frequent use of what the Learned call Technical Words, or 
Terms of Art. It is one of the great Beauties of Poetry, to make 
hard things intelligible, and to deliver what is abstruse of it self in 
such easy Language as may be understood by ordinary Readers : 
Besides that the Knowledge of a Poet should rather seem born 
with him, or inspired, than drawn from Books and Systems. I 
have often wondered how Mr. Dryden could translate a Passage of 
Virgil after the following manner : 

Tack to the Larboard, and stand off to Sea, 
Veer Star-board, Sea and Land. . , . 

Milton makes use of Larboard in the same manner. When he 
is upon Building he mentions Doric Pillars, Pilasters, Cornice, 
Freeze, Architrave. When he talks of Heavenly Bodies, you 
meet with Eccliptick, and Eccentric, the trepidation, Stars drop- 
ping from the Zenith, Rays culminating from the Equator. To 
which might be added many Instances of the like kind in several 
other Arts and Sciences. 

I shall in my next Saturday's * Paper [Papers] give an Account 
of the many particular Beauties in Milton, which would have been 
too long to insert under those general Heads I have already 
treated of, and with which I intend to conclude this Piece of 
Criticism. 



XVI. 

SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

(1675-1729.) 

SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 
1. The Coverley Papers. 

[Written in 1711-12.] 
No. 2. Friday, March 2, 171 1. 

The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of an 
ancient descent, a baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley. His 
great grand-father was inventor of that famous country-dance 
which is called after him. All who know that shire are very well 
acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He is a gen- 
tleman that is very singular in his behaviour, but his singularities 
proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to the man- 
ners of the world, only as he thinks the world is in the wrong. 
However, this humour creates him no enemies, for he does nothing 
with sourness or obstinacy ; and his being unconfined to modes 
and forms, makes him but the readier and more capable to please 
and oblige all who know him. When he is in town, he lives in 
Soho-square. It is said, he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he 
was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the next 
county to him. Before this disappointment, Sir Roger was what 
you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord 
Rochester and Sir George Etherege, fought a duel upon his first 
coming to town, and kicked bully Dawson 1 in a public coffee- 
house for calling him youngster. But being ill-used by the above- 
mentioned widow, he was very serious for a year and a half; and, 
1 " A noted sharper, swaggerer, and debauchee about town." — Chalmers. 
328 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 



329 



though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at last got over it he 
grew careless of himself, and never dressed afterwards He con 
tinues to wear a coat and doublet of the same cut that were in 
fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry humours, he 
tells us, has been in and out twelve times since he first wore it 
He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and hearty; keeps 
a good house both in town and country; a great lover of man- 
kind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour that he is 
rather beloved than esteemed. 

His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young 
women profess love to him, and the young men are glad of his 
company. When he comes into a house he calls the servants by 
their names, and talks all the way up stairs to a visit. I must not 
omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills the 
chair at a quarter-session with great abilities, and three months 
ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the 
game-act. 

The gentleman next in esteem and authority among us is an- 
other bachelor, who is a member of the Inner Temple, a man of 
great probity, wit, and understanding; but he has chosen his 
place of residence rather to obey the direction of an old humour- 
some father than in pursuit of his own inclinations. He was 
placed there to study the laws of the land, and is the most 
earned of any of the house in those of the stage. Aristotle and 
Longinus are much better understood by him than Littleton or 
Coke. The father sends up every post questions relating to mar- 
riage articles, leases and tenures, in the neighbourhood ; all which 
questions he agrees with an attorney to answer and take care of 
m the lump. He is studying the passions themselves when he 
should be inquiring into the debates among men which arise from 
them. He knows the argument of each of the orations of Demos- 
thenes and Tully, but not one case in the reports of our own 
courts. No one ever took him for a fool; but none, except his 
intimate friends, know he has a great deal of wit. This turn 
makes him at once both disinterested and agreeable. As few of 



330 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

his thoughts are drawn from business, they are most of them fit for 
conversation. His taste for books is a little too just for the age 
he lives in ; he has read all but approves of very few. His famil- 
iarity with the customs, manners, actions, and writings of the 
ancients, make him a very delicate observer of what occurs to 
him in the present world. He is an excellent critic, and the 
time of the play is his hour of business ; exactly at five he passes 
through New Inn, crosses through Russelcourt, and takes a turn 
at Will's till the play begins ; he has his shoes rubbed and his 
periwig powdered at the barber's as you go into the Rose. It is 
for the good of the audience when he is at a play, for the actors 
have an ambition to please him. 

The person of next consideration is Sir Andrew Freeport, a 
merchant of great eminence in the city of London. A person of 
indefatigable industry, strong reason, and great experience. His 
notions of trade are noble and generous, and, as every rich man 
has usually some sly way of jesting, which would make no great 
figure were he not a rich man, he calls the sea the British Com- 
mon. He is acquainted with commerce in all its parts, and will 
tell you that it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion 
by arms ; for true power is to be got by arts and industry. He will 
often argue, that, if this part of our trade were well cultivated, we 
should gain from one nation ; and if another, from another. I 
have heard him prove that diligence makes more lasting acquisi- 
tions than valour, and that sloth has ruined more nations than the 
sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims, amongst which 
the greatest favourite is, ' A penny saved is a penny got.' A 
general trader of good sense is pleasanter company than a 
general scholar ; and Sir Andrew having a natural unaffected 
eloquence, the perspicuity of his discourse gives the same pleas- 
ure that wit would in another man. He has made his fortunes 
himself, and says that England may be richer than other king- 
doms, by as plain methods as he himself is richer than other men ; 
though at the same time I can say this of him, that there is not 
a point in the compass, but blows home a ship in which he is an 
owner. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 331 

Next to Sir Andrew in the club-room sits Captain Sentry, a 
gentleman of great courage, and understanding, but invincible 
modesty. He is one of those that deserve very well, but are 
very awkward at putting their talents within the observation of such 
as should take notice of them. He was some years a captain, and 
behaved himself with great gallantry in several engagements and 
at several sieges ; but having a small estate of his own, and being 
next heir to Sir Roger, he has quitted a way of life in which no 
man can rise suitably to his merit, who is not something of a 
courtier as well as a soldier. I have heard him often lament that 
in a profession where merit is placed in so conspicuous a view, 
impudence should get the better of modesty. When he has 
talked to this purpose, I never heard him make a sour expression, 
but frankly confess that he left the world because he was not fit 
for it. A strict honesty and an even regular behaviour, are in them- 
selves obstacles to him that must press through crowds, who en- 
deavour at the same end with himself, the favour of the commander. 
He will, however, in his way of talk, excuse generals for not dis- 
posing according to men's desert, or inquiring into it ; for, says he, 
that great man who has a mind to help me, has as many to break 
through to come at me as I have to come at him : therefore he 
will conclude that the man who would make a figure, especially in 
a military way, must get over all false modesty, and assist his patron 
against the importunity of other pretenders, by a proper assurance 
in his own vindication. He says it is a civil cowardice to be back- 
ward in asserting what you ought to expect, as it is a military fear 
to be slow in attacking when it is your duty. With this candour 
does the gentleman speak of himself and others. The same 
frankness runs through all his conversation. The military part of 
his life has furnished him with many adventures, in the relation of 
which he is very agreeable to the company ; for he is never over- 
bearing, though accustomed to command men in the utmost 
degree below him, nor ever too obsequious, from a habit of obey- 
ing men highly above him. 

But that our society may not appear a set of humourists, unac- 



332 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

quainted with the gallantries and pleasures of the age, we have 
amongst us the gallant Will Honeycomb, a gentleman who, 
according to his years, should be in the decline of his life, but 
having ever been very careful of his person, and always had a very 
easy fortune, time has made but very little impression, either by 
wrinkles on his forehead, or traces in his brain. His person is 
well turned, of a good height. He is very ready at that sort of 
discourse with which men usually entertain women. He has all 
his life dressed very well, and remembers habits as others do men. 
He can smile when one speaks to him, and laughs easily. He knows 
the history of every mode, and can inform you from which of the 
French king's wenches our wives and daughters had this manner 
of curling their hair, that way of placing their hoods ; . . . and 
whose vanity to show her foot made that part of the dress so short 
in such a year. In a word, all his conversation and knowledge has 
been in the female world. As other men of his age will take notice 
to you what such a minister said upon such and such an occasion, 
he will tell you, when the Duke of Monmouth danced at court, 
such a woman was then smitten, another was taken with him at the 
head of his troop in the Park. In all these important relations, he 
has ever about the same time received a kind glance, or a blow of 
a fan from some celebrated beauty, mother of the present Lord 
Such-a-one. If you speak of a young commoner that said a 
lively thing in the house he starts up, ' He has good blood in his 
veins, . . . that young fellow's mother used me more like a dog than 
any woman I ever made advances to.' This way of talking of his, 
very much enlivens the conversation among us of a more sedate 
turn ; and I find there is not one of the company, but myself, who 
rarely speak at all, but speaks of him as of that sort of man, who 
is usually called a well-bred fine gentleman. To conclude his 
character, where women are not concerned, he is an honest worthy 
man. 

I cannot tell whether I am to account him whom I am next to 
speak of, as one of our company ; for he visits us but seldom, but 
when he does, it adds to every man else a new enjoyment of him- 






SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 333 

self. He is a clergyman, a very philosophic man, of general 
learning, great sanctity of life, and the most exact good breeding. 
He has the misfortune to be of a very weak constitution, and con- 
sequently cannot accept of such cares and business as preferments 
in his function would oblige him to ; he is therefore among divines 
what a chamber-counsellor is among lawyers. The probity of his 
mind, and the integrity of his life, create him followers, as being 
eloquent or loud advances others. He seldom introduces the 
subject he speaks upon ; but we are so far gone in years, that he 
observes, when he is among us, an earnestness to have him fall on 
some divine topic which he always treats with much authority, as 
one who has no interest in this world, as one who is hastening to 
the object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays 
and infirmities. These are my ordinary companions. 

No. 107. Tuesday, July 3, 171 1. 

The reception, manner of attendance, undisturbed freedom and 
quiet, which I meet with here in the country, has confirmed me 
in the opinion I always had, that the general corruption of man- 
ners in servants is owing to the conduct of masters. The aspect 
of every one in the family carries so much satisfaction, that it 
appears he knows the happy lot which has befallen him in being a 
member of it. There is one particular which I have seldom seen 
but at Sir Roger's ; it is usual, in all other places, that servants 
fly from the parts of the house through which their master is pass- 
ing ; on the contrary, here they industriously place themselves in 
his way : and it is on both sides, as it were, understood as a visit, 
when the servants appear without calling. This proceeds from 
the humane and equal temper of the man of the house, who also 
perfectly well knows how to enjoy a great estate with such econ- 
omy as ever to be much beforehand. This makes his own mind 
untroubled, and consequently unapt to vent peevish expressions, 
or give passionate or inconsistent orders to those about him. 
Thus respect and love go together ; and a certain cheerfulness in 
performance of their duty is the particular distinction of this lower 



334 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

part of this family. When a servant is called before his master, 
he does not come with an expectation to hear himself rated for 
some trivial fault, threatened to be stripped, or used with any 
other unbecoming language, which mean masters often give to 
worthy servants ; but it is often to know what road he took that 
he came so readily back according to order ; whether he passed 
by such a ground ; if the old man who rents it is in good health ; 
or whether he gave Sir Roger's love to him, or the like. 

A man who preserves a respect founded on his benevolence 
to his dependents, lives rather like a prince than a master in his 
family ; his orders are received as favours rather than duties, and 
the distinction of approaching him is part of the reward for exe- 
cuting what is commanded by him. 

There is another circumstance in which my friend excels in his 
management, which is the manner of rewarding his servants. 
He has ever been of opinion that giving his cast clothes to be 
worn by valets has a very ill effect upon little minds, and creates 
a silly sense of equality between the parties, in persons affected 
only with outward things. I have heard him often pleasant on 
this occasion, and describe a young gentleman abusing his man 
in that coat, which a month or two before was the most pleasing 
distinction he was conscious of in himself. He would turn his 
discourse still more pleasantly upon the ladies' bounties in this 
kind, and I have heard him say he knew a fine woman who dis- 
tributed rewards and punishments in giving becoming or unbe- 
coming dresses to her maids. 

But my good friend is above these little instances of good-will 
in bestowing only trifles on his servants ; a good servant to him is 
sure of having it in his choice very soon of being no servant at 
all. As I before observed, he is so good a husband, and knows 
so thoroughly that the skill of the purse is the cardinal virtue of 
this life ; I say he knows so well that frugality is the support of 
generosity, that he can often spare a large fine when a tenement 
falls, and give that settlement to a good servant who has a mind 
to go into the world, or make a stranger pay the fine to that 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 335 

servant, for his more comfortable maintenance, if he stays in his 
service. 

A man of honour and generosity considers it would be miserable 
to himself to have no will but that of another, though it were of 
the best person breathing, and for that reason goes on as fast as 
he is able to put his servants into independent livelihoods. The 
greatest part of Sir Roger's estate is tenanted by persons who 
have served himself or his ancestors. It was to me extremely 
pleasant to observe the visitants from several parts to welcome his 
arrival into the country : and all the difference that I could take 
notice of between the late servants who came to see him, and 
those who staid in the family, was that these latter were looked 
upon as fine gentleriien and better courtiers. 

This manumission and placing them in. a way of livelihood, I 
look upon as only what is due to a good servant, which encourage- 
ment will make his successor be as diligent, as humble, and as 
ready as he was. There is something wonderful in the narrow- 
ness of those minds which can be pleased, and be barren of 
bounty to those who please them. 

One might on this occasion recount the sense that great persons 
in all ages have had of the merit of their dependents, and the 
heroic services which men have done their masters in the ex- 
tremity of their fortunes, and shown to their undone patrons, that 
fortune was all the difference between them ; but as I design this 
my speculation only as a gentle admonition to thankless masters, 
I shall not go out of the occurrences of common life, but assert it 
as a general observation, that I never saw, but in Sir Roger's 
family and one or two more, good servants treated as they ought 
to be. Sir Roger's kindness extends to their children's children, 
and this very morning he sent his coachman's grandson to pren- 
tice. I shall conclude this paper with an account of a picture in 
his gallery, where there are many which will deserve my future 
observation. 

At the very upper end of this handsome structure I saw the 
portraiture of two young men standing in a river ; the one naked, 



336 SIR RICHARD S TEE IE. 

the other in a livery. The person supported seemed half dead, 
but still so much alive, as to show in his face exquisite joy and 
love towards the other. I thought the fainting figure resembled 
my friend Sir Roger ; and looking at the butler who stood by me, 
for an account of it, he informed me that the person in the livery 
was a servant of Sir Roger's who stood on the shore while his 
master was swimming, and observing him taken with some sudden 
illness, and sink under water, jumped in and saved him. He told 
me Sir Roger took off the dress he was in as soon as he came 
home, and by a great bounty at that time, followed by his favour 
ever since, had made him master of that pretty seat which we saw 
at a distance as we came to this house. I remembered indeed 
Sir Roger said there lived a very worthy gentleman, to whom he 
was highly obliged, without mentioning anything further. Upon 
my looking a little dissatisfied at some part of the picture, my 
attendant informed me that it was against Sir Roger's will, and at 
the earnest request of the gentleman himself, that he was drawn in 
the habit in which he had saved his master. 

No. 109. Thursday, July 5, 171 1. 

I was this morning walking in the gallery, when Sir Roger en- 
tered at the end opposite to me, and advancing towards me, said 
he was glad to meet me among his relations the De Coverley's, 
and hoped I liked the conversation of so much good company, 
who were as silent as myself. I knew he alluded to the pictures, and 
as he is a gentleman who does not a little value himself upon his 
ancient descent, I expected he would give me some account of 
them. We were now arrived at the upper end of the gallery, 
when the knight faced towards one of the pictures, and as we 
stood before it, he entered into the matter, after his blunt way of 
saying things as they occur to his imagination, without regular in- 
troduction, or care to preserve the appearance of chain of thought. 

' It is,' said he, ' worth while to consider the force of dress ; and 
how the persons of one age differ from those of another; merely 
by that only. One may observe also that the general fashion of 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 337 

one age has been followed by one particular set of people in 
another, and by them preserved from one generation to another. 
Thus the vast jetting coat and small bonnet, which was the habit 
in Henry the Seventh's time, is kept on in the yeomen of the 
guard, not without a good and politic view, because they look a 
foot taller, and a foot and a half broader : besides that the cap 
leaves the face expanded, and consequently more terrible, and 
fitter to stand at the entrance of palaces. 

* This predecessor of ours you see is dressed after this manner, 
and his cheeks would be no larger than mine were he in a hat as I 
am. He was the last man that won a prize in the Tilt-yard, 
which is now a common street before Whitehall. You see the 
broken lance that lies there by his right foot. He shivered that 
lance of his adversary all to pieces ; and bearing himself, look 
you, sir, in this manner, at the same time he came within the 
target of the gentleman who rode against him, and taking him 
with incredible force before him on the pommel of his saddle, 
he in that manner rid the tournament over with an air that showed 
he did it rather to perform the rule of the lists, than expose his 
enemy ; however it appeared he knew how to make use of a 
victory, and with a gentle trot he marched up to a gallery where 
their mistress sat, for they were rivals, and let him down with 
laudable courtesy and pardonable insolence. I don't know but 
it might be exactly where the coffee-house is now. 

1 You are to know this my ancestor was not only of a military 
genius, but fit also for the arts of peace, for he played on the bass- 
viol as well as any gentleman at court ; you see where his viol 
hangs by his basket-hilt sword. The action at the Tilt-yard you 
may be sure won the fair lady, who was a maid of honour, and 
the greatest beauty of her time ; here she stands the next pic- 
ture. You see, Sir, my great-great-great-grandmother has on 
the new-fashioned petticoat, except that the modern is gathered 
at the waist ; my grandmother appears as if she stood in a large 
drum, whereas the ladies now walk as if they were in a go-cart. 
For all this lady was bred at court, she became an excellent 



338 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

country wife, she brought ten children ; and when I show you the 
library, you shall see in her own hand, allowing for the difference 
of the language, the best receipt now in England both for a hasty- 
pudding and a white-pot. 2 

' If you please to fall back a little, because it is necessary to 
look at the three next pictures at one view ; these are three 
sisters. She on the right hand who is so very beautiful, died a 
maid ; the next to her, still handsomer, had the same fate, against 
her will ; this homely thing in the middle had both their portions 
added to her own, and was stolen by a neighbouring gentleman, 
a man of stratagem and resolution, for he poisoned three mastiffs 
to come at her, and knocked down two deer-stealers in carrying her 
off. Misfortunes happen in all families. The theft of this romp, 
and so much money, was no great matter to our estate. But the 
next heir that possessed it was this soft gentleman, whom you see 
there. Observe the small buttons, the little boots, the laces, the 
slashes about his clothes, and above all the posture he is drawn in, 
which to be sure was his choosing ; you see he sits with one hand 
on a desk writing and looking as it were another way, like an easy 
writer, or a sonneteer. He was one of those that had too much 
wit to know how to live in the world ; he was a man of no justice, 
but great good-manners ; he ruined everybody that had anything 
to do with him, but never said a rude thing in his life ; the most 
indolent person in the world, he would sign a deed that passed 
away half his estate with his gloves on, but would not put on his 
hat before a lady if it were to save his country. He is said to be 
the first that made love by squeezing the hand. He left the estate 
with ten thousand pounds debt upon it ; but however, by all hands, 
I have been informed that he was every way the finest gentleman 
in the world. That debt lay heavy on our house for one gen- 
eration, but it was retrieved by a gift from that honest man you 
see there, a citizen of our name, but nothing at all akin to us. I 
know Sir Andrew Freeport has said behind my back, that this 
man was descended from one of the ten children of the maid of 

2 Defined as a kind of cake baked in a pot. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 339 

honour I showed you above ; but it was never made out. We 
winked at the thing indeed, because money was wanting at that 
time.' Here I saw my friend a little embarrassed, and turned my 
face to the next portraiture. 

Sir Roger went on with his account of the gallery in the follow- 
ing manner : ' This man,' pointing to him I looked at, ' I take to 
be the honour of our house : Sir Humphrey de Coverley. He was 
in his dealings as punctual as a tradesman, and as generous as a 
gentleman. He would have thought himself as much undone by 
breaking his word, as if it were to be followed by bankruptcy. 
He served his country as knight of the shire to his dying day. 
He found it no easy matter to maintain an integrity in his words 
and actions, even in things that regarded the offices which were 
incumbent upon him, in the care of his own affairs and relations 
of life, and therefore dreaded, though he had great talents, to go 
into employments of state, where he must be exposed to the 
snares of ambition. Innocence of life and great ability were the 
distinguishing parts of his character; the latter, he had often 
observed, had led to the destruction of the former, and he used 
frequently to lament that great and good had not the same sig- 
nification. He was an excellent husbandman, but had resolved 
not to exceed such a degree of wealth ; all above it he bestowed in 
secret bounties many years after the sum he aimed at for his own 
use was attained. Yet he did not slacken his industry, but to a 
decent old age spent the life and fortune which was superfluous to 
himself, in the service of his friends and neighbours.' 

Here we were called to dinner, and Sir Roger ended the dis- 
course of this gentleman, by telling me, as we followed the ser- 
vant, that this his ancestor was a brave man, and narrowly escaped 
being killed in the civil wars ; ' for,' said he, < he was sent out of 
the field upon a private message, the day before the battle of 
Worcester.' The whim of narrowly escaping by having been 
within a day of danger, with other matters above mentioned, 
mixed with good sense, left me at a loss whether I was more 
delighted with my friend's wisdom or simplicity. 



340 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

No. 113. Tuesday, July io, 1711. 

In my first description of the company in which I pass most of 
my time, it may be remembered that I mentioned a great affliction 
which my friend Sir Roger had met with in his youth ; which was 
no less than a disappointment in love. It happened this evening, 
that we fell into a very pleasing walk at a distance from his house. 
As soon as we came into it, ' It is,' quoth the good man, looking 
round him with a smile, 'very hard, that any part of my land 
should be settled upon one who has used me so ill as the perverse 
widow did ; and yet I am sure I could not see a sprig of any 
bough of this whole walk of trees, but I should reflect upon her 
and her severity. She has certainly the finest hand of any woman 
in the world. You are to know, this was the place wherein I used 
to muse upon her, and by that custom I can never come into it, 
but the same tender sentiments revive in my mind, as if I had 
actually walked with that beautiful creature under these shades. I 
have been fool enough to carve her name on the bark of several 
of these trees ; so unhappy is the condition of men in love, to 
attempt the removing of their passion by the methods which serve 
only to imprint it deeper. She has certainly the finest hand of 
any woman in the world.' 

Here followed a profound silence ; and I was not displeased to 
observe my friend falling so naturally into a discourse, which I had 
ever before taken notice he industriously avoided. — After a very 
long pause he entered upon an account of this great circumstance 
in his life, with an air which I thought raised my idea of him above 
what I had ever had before ; and gave me the picture of that 
cheerful mind of his, before it received that stroke which has ever 
since affected his words and actions. But he went on as follows : 

' I came to my estate in my twenty-second year, and resolved to 
follow the steps of the most worthy of my ancestors who have 
inhabited this spot of earth before me, in all the methods of hos- 
pitality and good neighbourhood, for the sake of my fame ; and in 
country sports and recreations, for the sake of my health. In my 
twenty-third year I was obliged to serve as sheriff of the county, 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 341 

and in my servants, officers, and whole equipage, indulged the 
pleasure of a young man, who did not think ill of his own person, 
in taking that public occasion of showing my figure and behaviour 
to advantage. You may easily imagine to yourself what appear- 
ance I made, who am pretty tall, rid well, and was very well 
dressed, at the head of a whole county, with music before me, a 
feather in my hat, and my horse well bitted. I can assure you, I 
was not a little pleased with the kind looks and glances I had 
from all the balconies and windows as I rode to the hall where the 
assizes were held. But when I came there, a beautiful creature in 
a widow's habit sat in court to hear the event of a cause concern- 
ing her dower. This commanding creature, who was born for the 
destruction of all who beheld her, put on such a resignation in her 
countenance, and bore the whispers of all around the court with 
such a pretty uneasiness, I warrant you, and then recovered her- 
self from one eye to another, till she was perfectly confused by 
meeting something so wistful in all she encountered, that at last, 
with a murrain to her, she cast her bewitching eye upon me. I no 
sooner met it but I bowed like a great surprised booby, and know- 
ing her cause to be the first which came on, I cried, like a capti- 
vated calf as I was, "Make way for the defendant's witnesses." 
This sudden partiality made all the county immediately see the 
sheriff was also become a slave to the fine widow. During the 
time her cause was upon trial, she behaved herself, I warrant you, 
with such a deep attention to her business, took opportunities to 
have little billets handed to her counsel, then would be in such a 
pretty confusion, occasioned, you must know, by acting before so 
much company, that not only I but the whole court was prejudiced 
in her favour ; and all that the next heir to her husband had to 
urge, was thought so groundless and frivolous, that when it came 
to her counsel to reply, there was not half so much said as every- 
one besides in the court thought he could have urged to her ad- 
vantage. You must understand, sir, this perverse woman is one 
of those unaccountable creatures that secretly rejoice in the admi- 
ration of men, but indulge themselves in no further consequences. 



342 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

Hence it is that she has ever had a train of admirers, and she 
removes from her slaves in town to those in the country, accord- 
ing to the seasons of the year. She is a reading lady, and far 
gone in the pleasures of friendship. She is always accompanied 
by a confidant, who is witness to her daily protestations against 
our sex, and consequently a bar to her first steps towards love, 
upon the strength of her own maxims and declarations. 

' However, I must needs say, this accomplished mistress of 
mine has distinguished me above the rest, and has been known to 
declare Sir Roger de Coverley was the tamest and most humane 
of all the brutes in the country. I was told she said so by one 
who thought he rallied me ; but upon the strength of this slender 
encouragement of being thought least detestable, I made new 
liveries, new-paired my coach-horses, sent them all to town to be 
bitted, and taught to throw their legs well, and move all together, 
before I pretended to cross the country, and wait upon her. As 
soon as I thought my retinue suitable to the character of my for- 
tune and youth, I set out from hence to make my addresses. 
The particular skill of this lady has ever been to inflame your 
wishes, and yet to command respect. To make her mistress of 
this art, she has a greater share of knowledge, wit, and good sense, 
than is usual even among men of merit. Then she is beautiful 
beyond the race of women. If you will not let her go on with a 
certain artifice with her eyes, and the skill of beauty, she will arm 
herself with her real charms, and strike you with admiration in- 
stead of desire. It is certain that if you were to behold the whole 
woman, there is that dignity in her aspect, that composure in her 
motion, that complacency in her manner, that if her form makes 
you hope, her merit makes you fear. But then again, she is such 
a desperate scholar, that no country gentleman can approach her 
without being a jest. As I was going to tell you, when I came to 
her house, I was admitted to her presence with great civility ; at 
the same time she placed herself to be first seen by me in such an 
attitude, as I think you call the posture of a picture, that she dis- 
covered new charms, and I at last came towards her with such an 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 343 

awe as made me speechless. This she no sooner observed but 
she made her advantage of it, and began a discourse to me con- 
cerning love and honour, as they both are followed by pretenders, 
and the real votaries to them. When she discussed these points in 
a discourse, which, I verily believe, was as learned as the best phil- 
osopher in Europe could possibly make, she asked me whether she 
was so happy as to fall in with my sentiments on these important 
particulars. Her confidant sat by her, and upon my being in the 
last confusion and silence, this malicious aid of her's turning to 
her, says, " I am very glad to observe Sir Roger pauses upon 
this subject, and seems resolved to deliver all his sentiments upon 
the matter when he pleases to speak." They both kept their 
countenances, and after I had sat half an hour meditating how to 
behave before such profound casuists, I rose up and took my leave. 
Chance has since that time thrown me very often in her way, and 
she as often has directed a discourse to me which I do not under- 
stand. This barbarity has kept me ever at a distance from the 
most beautiful object my eyes ever beheld. It is thus also she 
deals with all mankind, and you must make love to her, as you 
would conquer the sphinx, by posing her. But were she like 
other women, and that there were any talking to her, how constant 
must the pleasure of that man be, who could converse with a crea- 
ture — But, after all, you may be sure her heart is fixed on some 
one or other ; and yet I have been credibly informed ; but who 
can believe half that is said ! — after she had done speaking to 
me, she put her hand to her bosom, and adjusted her tucker. 
Then she cast her eyes a little down, upon my beholding her too 
earnestly. They say she sings excellently : her voice in her or- 
dinary speech has something in it inexpressibly sweet. You must 
know I dined with her at a public table the day after I first saw 
her, and she helped me to some tansy in the eye of all the gentle- 
men in the country. She has certainly the finest hand of any 
woman in the world. I can assure you, sir, were you to behold 
her, you would be in the same condition ; for, as her speech is 
music, her form is angelic. But I find I grow irregular while I am 



344 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

talking of her j but indeed it would be stupidity to be uncon- 
cerned at such perfection. Oh, the excellent creature ! she is as 
inimitable to all women, as she is inaccessible to all men — ' 

I found my friend began to rave, and insensibly led him towards 
the house, that we might be joined by some other company ; and 
am convinced that the widow is the secret cause of all that in- 
consistency which appears in some parts of my friend's discourse ; 
though he has so much command of himself as not directly to 
mention her, yet according to that of Martial, which one knows 
not how to render into English, dum tacet, hanc loquitur ; 3 I shall 
end this paper with that whole epigram, which represents with 
much humour my honest friend's condition : 

" Quidquid agit Ru/us, nihil est nisi Ncevia Rufo. 
Si gaudet, siflel, si tacet, hanc loquitur; 
Cosnat, propinat, poscit, negat, innuit, una est 

Ncevia ; si non sit Ncevia, mutus erit. 
Scriberet hestemd patri cum luce salulem, 
Ncevia lux, inquit, Ncevia! numen, avc. 

Martial, Epigrams, I. 69. 

" Let Rufus weep, rejoice, stand, sit or walk, 
Still he can nothing but of Nsevia talk; 
Let him eat, drink, ask questions, or dispute, 
Still he must speak of Nsevia, or be mute. 
He writ to his father, ending with this line, 
I am, my lovely Ncevia, ever thine." 

No. 118. Monday, July 16, 1711. 

This agreeable seat is surrounded with so many pleasing walks, 
which are struck out of a wood, in the midst of which the house 
stands, that one can hardly ever be weary of rambling from one 
labyrinth of delight to another. To one used to live in a city the 
charms of the country are so exquisite, that the mind is lost in a 
certain transport which raises us above ordinary life, and yet is 
not strong enough to be inconsistent with tranquillity. This state 

3 while he is silent, he speaks of her. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 345 

of mind was I in, ravished with the murmur of waters, the whisper 
of breezes, the singing of birds ; and whether I looked up to the 
heavens, down on the earth, or turned to the prospects around 
me, still struck with new sense of pleasure ; when I found by 
the voice of my friend, who walked by me, that we had insensibly 
strolled into the grove sacred to the widow. ' This woman,' says 
he, ' is of all others the most unintelligible ; she either designs to 
marry, or she does not. What is the most perplexing of all is, 
that she does not either say to her lovers she has any resolution 
against that condition of life in general, or that she banishes them ; 
but conscious of her own merit she permits their addresses without 
fear of any ill consequences, or want of respect, from their rage or 
despair. She has that in her aspect, against which it is impossible 
to offend. A man whose thoughts are constantly bent upon so 
agreeable an object, must be excused if the ordinary occurrences 
in conversation are below his attention. I call her indeed per- 
verse, but, alas ! why do I call her so ? because her superior merit 
is such, that I cannot approach her without awe, that my heart is 
checked by too much esteem ! I am angry that her charms are 
not more accessible, that I am more inclined to worship than 
salute her. How often have I wished her unhappy that I might 
have an opportunity of serving her? and how often troubled in 
that very imagination, at giving her the pain of being obliged? 
Well, I have led a miserable life in secret upon her account ; but 
fancy she would have condescended to have some regard for me, 
if it had not been for that watchful animal her confidant. 

' Of all persons under the sun,' continued he, calling me by my 
name, ' be sure to set a mark upon confidants : they are of all 
people the most impertinent. What is most pleasant to observe 
in them, is, that they assume to themselves the merit of the per- 
sons whom they have in their custody. Orestilla is a great fortune, 
and in wonderful danger of surprises, therefore full of suspicions 
of the least indifferent thing, particularly careful of new acquain- 
tance, and of growing too familiar with the old. Themista, her 
favourite woman, is every whit as careful of whom she speaks to, 



346 SIR RICHARD S TEE IE. 

and what she says. Let the ward be a beauty, her confidant shall 
treat you with an air of distance ; let her be a fortune, and she 
assumes the suspicious behaviour of her friend and patroness. 
Thus it is that very many of our unmarried women of distinction 
are to all intents and purposes married, except the consideration 
of different sexes. They are directly under the conduct of their 
whisperers ; and think they are in a state of freedom, while they 
can prate with one of these attendants of all men in general, and 
still avoid the man they most like. You do not see one heiress in 
a hundred whose fate does not turn upon this circumstance of 
choosing a confidant. Thus it is that the lady is addressed to, 
presented and flattered, only by proxy, in her woman. In my 
case, how is it possible that — ? ' Sir Roger was proceeding in 
his harangue, when we heard the voice of one speaking very impor- 
tunately, and repeating these words, ' What, not one smile ? ' We 
followed the sound till we came to a close thicket, on the other 
side of which we saw a young woman sitting as it were in a person- 
ated sullenness just over a transparent fountain. Opposite to her 
stood Mr. W T illiams, Sir Roger's master of the game. The knight 
whispered me, ' Hist, these are lovers.' The huntsman looking 
earnestly at the shadow of the young maiden in the stream, ' Oh 
thou dear picture, if thou couldst remain there in the absence of 
that fair creature whom you represent in the water, how willingly 
could I stand here satisfied forever, without troubling my dear 
Betty herself with any mention of her unfortunate William, whom 
she is angry with ! But alas ! when she pleases to be gone, thou 
wilt also vanish — Yet let me talk to thee while thou dost stay. 
Tell my dearest Betty thou dost not more depend upon her, than 
does her William : her absence will make away with me as well as 
thee. If she offers to remove thee, I will jump into these waves 
to lay hold on thee ; herself, her own dear person, I must never 
embrace again. — Still do you hear me without one smile — It is 
too much to bear.' — He had no sooner spoke these words, but 
he made an offer of throwing himself into the water : at which his 
mistress started up, and at the next instant he jumped across the 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 347 

fountain, and met her in an embrace. She, half recovering from 
her fright, said in the most charming voice imaginable, and with a 
tone of complaint, ' I thought how well you would drown yourself. 
No, no, you won't drown yourself till you have taken your leave of 
Susan Holiday.' The huntsman, with a tenderness that spoke the 
most passionate love, and with his cheek close to her's, whispered 
the softest vows of fidelity in her ear, and cried, ' Don't, my dear, 
believe a word Kate Willow says ; she is spiteful, and makes sto- 
ries, because she loves to hear me talk to herself for your sake.' 
' Look you there,' quoth Sir Roger, ' do you see there, all mischief 
comes from confidants ! But let us not interrupt them ; the maid 
is honest and the man dare not be otherwise, for he knows I loved 
her father : I will interpose in this matter, and hasten the wedding. 
Kate Willow is a witty mischievous wench in the neighbourhood, 
who was a beauty : and makes me hope I shall see the perverse 
widow in her condition. She was so flippant with her answers to 
all the honest fellows that came near her, and so very vain of her 
beauty, that she has valued herself upon her charms till they have 
ceased. She therefore now makes it her business to prevent other 
young women from being more discreet than she was herself: 
however, the saucy thing said the other day well enough, " Sir 
Roger and I must make a match, for we are both despised by 
those we loved." The hussy has a great deal of power wherever 
she comes, and has her share of cunning. 

' However, when I reflect upon this woman, I do not know 
whether in the main I am the worse for having loved her : when- 
ever she is recalled to my imagination my youth returns, and I feel 
a forgotten warmth in my veins. This affliction in my life has 
streaked all my conduct with a softness, of which I should other- 
wise have been incapable. It is owing, perhaps, to this dear 
image in my heart that I am apt to relent, that I easily forgive, 
and that many desirable things are grown into my temper, which 
I should not have arrived at by better motives than the thought of 
being one day hers. I am pretty well satisfied such a passion as 
I have had is never well cured ; and between you and me, I am 



348 SIR RICHARD S TEE IE. 

often apt to imagine it has had some whimsical effect upon my 
brain ; for I frequently find, that in my most serious discourse I 
let fall some comical familiarity of speech or odd phrase that 
makes the company laugh. However, I cannot but allow she is 
a most excellent woman. When she is in the country, I warrant 
she does not run into dairies, but reads upon the nature of plants ; 
but has a glass-hive, and comes into the garden out of books to 
see them work, and observe the policies of their commonwealth. 
She understands everything. I would give ten pounds to hear 
her argue with my friend Sir Andrew Freeport about trade. No, 
no, for all she looks so innocent, as it were, take my word for it 
she is no fool.' 

No. 132. Wednesday, August i, 171 1. 

Having notified to my good friend Sir Roger that I should set 
out for London the next day, his horses were ready at the ap- 
pointed hour in the evening ; and attended by one of his grooms, 
I arrived at the county-town at twilight, in order to be ready for 
the stage-coach the day following. As soon as we arrived at the 
inn, the servant who waited upon me inquired of the chamberlain 
in my hearing what company he had for the coach ? The fellow 
answered, 'Mrs. Betty Arable the great fortune, and the widow, 
her mother ; a recruiting officer, who took a place because they 
were to go ; young Squire Quickset, her cousin, that her mother 
wished her to be married to ; Ephraim the quaker, her guardian ; 
and a gentleman that has studied himself dumb from Sir Roger 
de Coverley's.' I observed by what he said of myself that ac- 
cording to his office he dealt much in intelligence ; and doubted 
not but there was some foundation for his reports of the rest of 
the company, as well as for the whimsical account he gave of me. 
The next morning at daybreak we were all called ; and I who 
know my own natural shyness, and endeavour to be as little liable 
to be disputed with as possible, dressed immediately, that I might 
make no one wait. The first preparation for our setting out was, 
that the captain's half pike was placed near the coachman, and a 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 349 

drum behind the coach. In the mean time the drummer, the 
captain's equipage, 4 was very loud, ' that none of the captain's 
things should be placed so as to be spoiled ; ' upon which his 
cloak-bag was fixed in the seat of the coach • and the captain 
himself, according to a frequent, though invidious behaviour of 
miltary men, ordered his man to look sharp, that none but one 
of the ladies should have the place he had taken fronting the 
coach-box. 

We were in some little time fixed in our seats, and sat with 
that dislike which people not too good-natured usually conceive 
of each other at first sight. The coach jumbled us insensibly 
into some sort of familiarity ; and we had not moved above two 
miles, when the widow asked the captain what success he had in 
his recruiting? The officer, with a frankness he believed very 
graceful, told her, ' that indeed he had but very little luck, and 
had suffered much by desertion, therefore should be glad to end 
his warfare in the service of her or her fair daughter. In a word,' 
continued he, * I am a soldier, and to be plain is my character ; 
you see me, madam, young, sound, and impudent ; take me your- 
self, widow, or give me to her, I will be wholly at your disposal. 
I am a soldier of fortune, ha ! — ' This was followed by a vain 
laugh of his own, and a deep silence of all the rest of the com- 
pany. I had nothing left for it but to fall fast asleep, which I 
did with all speed. — 

1 Come,' said he, ' resolve upon it, we will make a wedding at 
the next town ; we will wake this pleasant companion who is 
fallen asleep, to be the bride-man ; and,' giving the quaker a clap 
on the knee, he concluded, ' this sly saint, who, I will warrant, 
understands what is what as well as you or I, widow, shall give the 
bride as father.' The quaker, who happened to be a man of 
smartness, answered : ' Friend, I take it in good part that thou 
hast given me the authority of a father over this comely and vir- 
tuous child ; and I must assure thee, that if I have the giving her, 
I shall not bestow her on thee. Thy mirth, friend, savoureth of 

4 attendant. 



350 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

folly ; thou art a person of a light mind ; thy drum is a type of 
thee, it soundeth because it is empty. Verily, it is not from thy 
fulness, but thy emptiness that thou hast spoken this day. Friend, 
friend, we have hired this coach in partnership with thee, to carry 
us to the great city ; we cannot go any other way. This worthy 
mother must hear thee if thou wilt needs utter thy follies; we 
cannot help it, friend, I say ; if thou wilt, we must hear thee ; but 
if thou wert a man of understanding, thou wouldst not take ad- 
vantage of thy courageous countenance to abash us children of 
peace. — Thou art, thou sayest, a soldier; give quarter to us, 
who cannot resist thee. Why didst thou fleer at our friend, who 
feigned himself asleep? He said nothing; but how dost thou 
know what he containeth? If thou speakest improper things 
in the hearing of this virtuous young virgin, consider it as an 
outrage against a distressed person that cannot get from thee ; to 
speak indiscreetly what we are obliged to hear, by being hasped 
up with thee in this public vehicle, is in some degree assaulting on 
the high-road.' 

Here Ephraim paused, and the captain, with a happy and un- 
common impudence, which can be convicted and support itself at 
the same time, cries, ' Faith, friend, I thank thee ; I should have 
been a little impertinent if thou hadst not reprimanded me. 
Come, thou art, I see, a smoky old fellow, and I will be very 
orderly the ensuing part of the journey. I was going to give my- 
self airs, but, ladies, I beg pardon.' 

The captain was so little out of humour, and our company was 
so far from being soured by this little ruffle, that Ephraim and he 
took a particular delight in being agreeable to each other for the 
future ; and assumed their different provinces in the conduct of the 
company. Our reckonings, apartments, and accommodation, fell 
under Ephraim ; and the captain looked to all disputes on the 
road, as the good behaviour of our coachman, and the right we 
had of taking place, as going to London, of all vehicles coming 
from thence. The occurrences we met with were ordinary, and 
very little happened which could entertain by the relation of 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 351 

them ; but when I considered the company we were in, I took it 
for no small good fortune, that the whole journey was not spent 
in impertinences, which to one part of us might be an entertain- 
ment, to the other a suffering. What therefore Ephraim said 
when we were almost arrived at London, had to me an air not 
only of good understanding, but good breeding. Upon the young 
lady's expressing her satisfaction in the journey, and declaring how 
delightful it had been to her, Ephraim delivered himself as fol- 
lows : - There is no ordinary part of human life, which expresseth 
so much a good mind, and a right inward man, as his behaviour 
upon meeting with strangers, especially such as may seem the 
most unsuitable companions to him ; such a man, when he falleth 
in the way with persons of simplicity and innocence, however 
knowing he may be in the ways of men, will not vaunt himself 
thereof, but will the rather hide his superiority to them, that he 
may not be painful unto them. My good friend,' continued he, 
turning to the officer, ' thee and I are to part by and by, and per- 
adventure we may never meet again ; but be advised by a plain 
man ; modes and apparel are but trifles to the real man, therefore 
do not think such a man as thyself terrible for thy garb, nor such 
a one as me contemptible for mine. When two such as thee and 
I meet, with affections as we ought to have towards each other, 
thou shouldst rejoice to see my peaceable demeanor, and I should 
be glad to see thy strength and ability to protect me in it.' 



2. On Reading the Church-Service. 
No. 147. Saturday, August i8, 1711. 

" Mr. Spectator, 

" The well reading of the Common- P/ayer is of so great impor- 
tance, and so much neglected, that I take the liberty to offer to 
your consideration some particulars on that subject. And what 
more worthy your observation than this? A thing so public, and 
of so high consequence. It is indeed wonderful, that the frequent 



352 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

exercise of it should not make the performers of that duty more 
expert in it. This inability, as I conceive, proceeds from the little 
care that is taken of their reading while boys and at school, where 
when they are got into Latin, they are looked upon as above Eng- 
lish, the reading of which is wholly neglected, or at least read to 
very little purpose, without any due observations made to them of 
the proper accent and manner of reading ; by this means they 
have acquired such ill habits as will not easily be removed. The 
only way that I know of to remedy this, is to propose some per- 
son of great ability that way as a pattern for them ; example being 
most effectual to convince the learned, as well as instruct the 
ignorant. 

" You must know, sir, I have been a constant frequenter of the 
service of the Church of England for above these four years last 
past, and till Sunday was seven-night never discovered, to so great a 
degree, the excellency of the Common-Prayer. When, being at St. 
James's Garlick-Hill church, I heard the service read so distinctly, 
so emphatically, and so fervently, that it was next to an impossi- 
bility to be unattentive. My eyes and my thoughts could not 
wander as usual, but were confined to my prayers. I then consid- 
ered I addressed myself to the Almighty, and not to a beautiful 
face. And when I reflected on my former performances of that 
duty, I found I had run it over as a matter of form, in comparison 
to the manner in which I then discharged it. My mind was really 
affected, and fervent wishes accompanied my words. The Con- 
fession was read with such resigned humility, the Absolution with 
such a comfortable authority, the Thanksgivings with such a relig- 
ious joy, as made me feel those affections of the mind in a manner 
I never did before. To remedy, therefore, the grievance above 
complained of, I humbly propose, that this excellent reader, upon 
the next and every annual assembly of the clergy of Sion-college, 
and all other conventions, should read prayers before them. For 
then those that are afraid of stretching their mouths, and spoiling 
their soft voices, will learn to read with clearness, loudness, and 
strength ; others that affect a rakish negligent air, by folding their 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SPECTATOR. 353 

arms and lolling on their book, will be taught a decent behaviour, 
and comely erection of body. Those that read so fast as if im- 
patient of their Mvork, may learn to speak deliberately. There 
is another sort of persons whom I call Pindaric readers, as being 
confined to no set measure ; these pronounce five or six words 
with great deliberation, and the five or six subsequent ones with 
as great celerity ; the first part of a sentence with a very exalted 
voice, and the latter part with a submissive one ; sometimes 
again, with one sort of a tone, and immediately after with a very 
different one. These gentlemen will learn of my admired reader 
an evenness of voice and delivery, and all who are innocent of 
these affectations, but read with such an indifferency as if they 
did not understand the language, may then be informed of the art 
of reading movingly and fervently, how to place the emphasis, and 
give the proper accent to each word, and how to vary the voice 
according to the nature of the sentence. There is certainly a 
very great difference between the reading a prayer and a ga- 
zette, which I beg of you to inform a set of readers, who affect, 
forsooth, a certain gentleman-like familiarity of tone, and mend 
the language as they go on, crying, instead of ' pardoneth and ab- 
solveth,' ' pardons and absolves.' These are often pretty classical 
scholars, and would think it an unpardonable sin to read Virgil or 
Martial with so little taste as they do divine service. 

" This indifferency seems to me to arise from the endeavour of 
avoiding the imputation of cant, and the false notion of it. It will 
be proper, therefore, to trace the original and signification of this 
word. ' Cant ' is, by some people, derived from one Andrew Cant, 
who, they say, was a presbyterian minister in some illiterate part 
of Scotland, who by exercise and use had obtained the faculty, 
alias gift, of talking in the pulpit in such a dialect that it is said he 
was understood by none but his own congregation, and not by all 
of them. Since Master Cant's time, it has been understood in a 
larger sense, and signifies all sudden exclamations, whinings, unu- 
sual tones, and in fine all praying and preaching, like the unlearned 
of the Presbyterians. But I hope a proper elevation of voice, a 



354 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 

due emphasis and accent, are not to co'me within this description. 
So that our readers may still be as unlike* the Presbyterians as they 
please. The dissenters, I mean such as I have fieard, do indeed 
elevate their voices, but it is with sudden jumps from the lower to 
the higher part of them • and that with so little sense or skill, that 
their elevation and cadence is bawling and muttering. They 
make use of an emphasis, but so improperly, that it is often placed 
on some very insignificant particle, as upon 'if' or ' and.' Now if 
these improprieties have so great an effect on the people, as we 
see they have, how great an influence would the service of our 
church, containing the best prayers that ever were composed, and 
that in terms most affecting, most humble, and most expressive of 
our wants, and dependence on the object of our worship, disposed 
in most proper order, and void of all confusion ; what influence, I 
say, would these prayers have, were they delivered with a due 
emphasis, and apposite rising and variation of voice, the sentence 
concluded with a gentle cadence, and in a word, with such an 
accent and turn of speech as is peculiar to prayer ! 

" As the matter of worship is now managed, in dissenting con- 
gregations, you find insignificant words and phrases raised by a 
lively vehemence ; in our own churches, the most exalted sense 
depreciated by a dispassionate indolence. I remember to have 
heard Dr. S — e say in his pulpit, of the Common-Prayer, that, 
at least, it was as perfect as anything of human institution. If the 
gentlemen who err in this kind would please to recollect the many 
pleasantries they have read upon those who recite good things 
with an ill grace, they would go on to think that what in that case 
is only ridiculous, in themselves is impious. But leaving this to 
their own reflections, I shall conclude this trouble with what 
Caesar said upon the irregularity of tone in one who read before 
him, ' Do you read or sing? If you sing, you sing very ill.' 5 

" Your most humble servant." 

6 Si legis, cantas ; si cantas, male cantas. — C. Caesar in Quintilian, I, 
8, 2, with clauses transposed. 



XVII. 

DANIEL DEFOE. 

(1661-1731.) 

HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON, 1665. 

[Written about 1722.] 

I lived without Aldgate, about midway between Aldgate church 
and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the 
street ; and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the 
city, our neighbourhood continued very easy ; but at the other end 
of the town their consternation was very great, and the richer sort 
of people, especially the nobility and gentry from the west part 
of the city, thronged out of town, with their families and servants, 
in an unusual manner ; and this was more particularly seen in 
Whitechapel; that is to say, the Broad-street where I lived; in- 
deed nothing was to be seen, but waggons and carts, with goods, 
women, servants, children, etc. ; coaches filled with people of the 
better sort, and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying away ; 
then empty waggons and carts appeared, and spare horses with 
servants, who it was apparent were returning or sent from the 
country to fetch more people : besides innumerable numbers of 
men on horseback, some alone, others with servants, and generally 
speaking, all loaded with baggage and fitted out for travelling, as 
any one might perceive by their appearance. 

This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it 
was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night 
(for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen,) it 
filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was coming 

355 



356 DANIEL DEFOE. 

upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that would be 
left in it. 

This hurry of the people was such for some weeks, that there 
was no getting at the lord mayor's door without exceeding diffi- 
culty ; there was such pressing and crowding there to get passes 
and certificates of health, for such as travelled abroad ; for, with- 
out these, there was no being admitted to pass through the towns 
upon the road, or to lodge in any inn. Now as there had none 
died in the city for all this time, my lord mayor gave certificates 
of health without any difficulty to all those who lived in the ninety- 
seven parishes, and to those within the liberties too, for awhile. 

This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the 
months of May and June, and the more because it was rumoured 
that an order of the government was to be issued out, to place 
turnpikes 1 and barriers on the road, to prevent people's travelling ; 
and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from 
London to pass, for fear of bringing the infection along with them, 
though neither of these rumours had any foundation, but in the 
imagination, especially at first. 

I now began to consider seriously with myself, concerning my 
own case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, 
whether I should resolve to stay in London, or shut up my house 
and flee, as many of my neighbours did. I have set this particular 
down so fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to 
those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same 
distress, and to the same manner of making their choice, and 
therefore I desire this account may pass with them rather for a 
direction to themselves to act by, than a history of my actings, 
seeing it may not be of one farthing value to them to note what 
became of me. 

I had two important things before me ; the one was the carry- 
ing on my business and shop, which was considerable, and in 
which was embarked all my effects in the world ; and the other 
was the preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity, as I saw 

1 turnstiles, or gates, to prevent passing without authority. 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 357 

apparently was coming upon the whole city ; and which, however 
great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people's, repre- 
sented to be much greater than it could be. 

The first consideration was of great moment to me ; my trade 
was a saddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or 
chance trade, but among the merchants, trading to the English 
colonies in America, so my effects lay very much in the hands of 
such. I was a single man it is true, but I had a family of servants, 
who I kept at my business ; had a house, shop, and warehouses 
filled with goods ; and, in short, to leave them all as things in 
such a case must be left, that is to say, without any overseer or 
person fit to be trusted with them, had been to hazard the loss 
not only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I had in 
the world. 

I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not 
many years before come over from Portugal ; and, advising with 
him, his answer was in the three words, the same that was given 
in another case quite different, viz., Master, save thyself. In a 
word, he was for my retiring into the country, as he resolved to 
do himself, with his family ; telling me, what he had, it seems, 
heard abroad, that the best preparation for the plague was to run 
away from it. As to my argument of losing my trade, my goods, 
or debts, he quite confuted me : he told me the same thing, which 
I argued for my staying, viz., That I would trust God with my 
safety and health, was the strongest repulse to my pretentions of 
losing my trade and my goods ; For, says he, is it not as reason- 
able that you should trust God with the chance or risk of losing 
your trade, as that you should stay in so eminent a point of danger, 
and trust him with your life ? 

I could not argue that I was in any strait as to a place where 
to go, having several friends and relations in Northamptonshire, 
whence our family first came from ; and particularly, I had an 
only sister in Lincolnshire, very willing to receive and entertain 
me. 

My brother, who had already sent his wife and two children 



35S DANIEL DEFOE. 

into Bedfordshire, and resolved to follow them, pressed my going 
very earnestly ; and I had once resolved to comply with his de- 
sires, but at that time could get no horse : for though it is true, all 
the people did not go out of the city of London ; yet I may ven- 
ture to say, that in a manner all the horses did ; for there was 
hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city, for some 
weeks. Once I resolved to travel on foot with one servant ; and 
as many did, lie at no inn, but carry a soldier's tent with us, and 
so lie in the fields, the weather being very warm, and no danger 
from taking cold. I say, as many did, because several did so at 
the last, especially those who had been in the armies, in the war 
which had not been many years past : and I must needs say, that 
speaking of second causes, had most of the people that travelled 
done so, the plague had not been carried into so many country 
towns and houses as it was, to the great damage, and indeed to 
the ruin of abundance of people. 

But then, my servant, who I had intended to take down with 
me, deceived me, and being frighted at the increase of the dis- 
temper, and not knowing when I should go, he took other meas- 
ures, and left me, so I was put off for that time ; and one way or 
other, I always found that to appoint to go away, was always 
crossed by some accident or other, so as to disappoint and put it 
off again j and this brings in a story which otherwise might be 
thought a needless digression, viz., about these disappointments 
being from heaven. 

It came very warmly into my mind, one morning, as I was 
musing on this particular thing, that as nothing attended us with- 
out the direction or permission of Divine Power, so these disap- 
pointments must have something in them extraordinary : and I 
ought to consider whether it did not evidently point out, or intimate 
to me, that it was the will of Heaven I should not go. It immedi- 
ately followed in my thoughts, that it really was from God that I 
should stay ; he was able effectually to preserve me in the midst 
of all the death and danger that would surround me ; and that if 
I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my habitation, and 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDON 359 

acted contrary to these intimations, which I believed to be divine, 
it was a kind of flying from God, and that he could cause his 
justice to overtake me when and where he thought fit. 

These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I 
came to discourse with my brother again, I told him, that I 
inclined to stay and take my lot in that station, in which God had 
placed me ; and that it seemed to be made more especially my 
duty, on the account of what I have said. 

My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all 
I had suggested about its being an intimation from heaven, and 
told me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called 
them, as I was ; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of 
heaven, if I had been any way disabled by distempers or diseases, 
and that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the 
direction of Him, who, having been my Maker, had an undisputed 
right of sovereignty in disposing of me ; and that then there had 
been no difficulty to determine which was the call of his providence 
and which was not ; but that I should take it as an intimation 
from heaven, that I should not go out of town, only because I 
could not hire a horse to go, or my fellow was run away that was 
to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the same time I had my 
health and limbs, and other servants, and might with ease travel 
a day or two on foot, and having a good certificate of being in 
perfect health, might either hire a horse, or take post on the road, 
as I thought fit. 

Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences 
which attend the presumption of the Turks and Mahometans in 
Asia, and in other places, where he had been (for my brother, 
being a merchant, was a few years before, as I have already 
observed, returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and 
how, presuming upon their professed predestinating notions, and 
of every man's end being predetermined, and unalterably before- 
hand decreed, they would go unconcerned into infected places, 
and converse with infected persons, by which means they died 
at the rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week, whereas the Euro- 



360 DAXIEL DEFOE. 

peans or Christian merchants who kept themselves retired and 
reserved, generally escaped the contagion. 

Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions 
again, and I began to resolve to go, and accordingly made all 
things ready; for, in short, the infection increased round me, 
and the bills were risen to almost seven hundred a week, and my 
brother told me he would venture to stay no longer. I desired 
him to let me consider of it but till the next day, and I would 
resolve ; and as I had already prepared everything as well as I 
could, as to my business, and who to intrust my affairs with, I 
had little to do but to resolve. 

I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind, 
irresolute, and not knowing what to do. I had set the evening 
wholly apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone ; for 
already people had, as it were by a general consent, taken up the 
custom of not going out of doors after sunset, the reasons I shall 
have occasion to say more of by and by. 

In the retirement of this evening I endeavoured to resolve first, 
what was my duty to do, and I stated the arguments with which 
my brother had pressed me to go into the country, and I set 
against them the strong impressions which I had on my mind 
for staying ; the visible call I seemed to have from the particular 
circumstance of my calling, and the care due from me for the 
preservation of my effects, which were, as I might say, my estate : 
also the intimations which I thought I had from heaven, that to 
me signified a kind of direction to venture, and it occurred to me, 
that if I had what I call a direction to stay, I ought to suppose it 
contained a promise of being preserved, if I obeyed. 

This lay close to me, and my mind seemed more and. more 
encouraged to stay than ever, and supported with a secret satis- 
faction, that I should be kept. Add to this, that turning over the 
Bible, which lay before me, and while my thoughts were more 
than ordinary serious upon the question, I cried out, Well, I know 
not what to do, Lord direct me ! and the like ; and at that 
juncture I happened to stop turning over the book, at the 91st 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 361 

Psalm, and casting my eye on the second verse, I read to the 
seventh verse exclusive ; and after that, included the ioth, as 
follows : — "I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge, and my for- 
tress, my God, in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee 
from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. 
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt 
thou trust : his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou 
shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that 
flieth by day : nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor 
for the destruction that wasteth at noon-day. A thousand shall 
fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand ; but it shall 
not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and 
see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord 
which is my refuge, even the most high, thy habitation : there 
shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy 
dwelling," <S:c. 

I scarce need tell the reader that from that moment I resolved 
that I would stay in the town, and casting myself entirely upon 
the goodness and protection of the Almighty, would not seek any 
other shelter whatever ; and that as my times were in his hands, 
he was as able to keep me in a time of the infection, as in a time 
of health ; and if he did not think fit to deliver me, still I was in 
his hands, and it was meet he should do with me as should seem 
good to him. 

With this resolution I went to bed ; and I was farther confirmed 
in it the next day, by the woman being taken ill with whom I had 
intended to intrust my house and all my affairs. But I had a 
farther obligation laid on me on the same side, for the next day 
I found myself very much out of order also ; so that if I would 
have gone away, I could not, and I continued ill three or four 
days, and this entirely determined my stay ; so I took my leave 
of my brother, who went away to Dorking, in Surrey, and after- 
wards fetched around farther into Buckinghamshire, or Bedford- 
shire, to a retreat he had found out there for his family. 

It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained, it 



362 DA XT EL DEFOE. 

was immediately said he had the plague ; and though I had in- 
deed no symptoms of that distemper, yet being very ill, both in 
my head and in my stomach, I was not without apprehension that 
I really was infected, but in about three days I grew better, the 
third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much refreshed ; 
the apprehensions of its being the infection went also quite away 
with my illness, and I went about my business as usual. 

These things however, put off all my thoughts of going into the 
country ; and my brother also being gone, I had no more debate 
either with him, or with myself, on that subject. 

It was now mid July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged 
at the other end of the town, and as I said before, in the parishes 
of St. Giles's, St. Andrew's, Holborn, and towards Westminster, 
began now to come eastward, towards the part where I lived. It 
was to be observed indeed, that it did not come straight on 
towards us ; for the city, that is to say within the walls, was indif- 
ferent healthy still ; nor was it got then very much over the water 
into Southwark ; for though there died that week 1268 of all dis- 
tempers, whereof it might be supposed above nine hundred died 
of the plague ; yet there was but twenty- eight in the whole city, 
within the walls, and but nineteen in Southwark, Lambeth parish 
included ; whereas in the parishes of St. Giles, and St. Martin's in 
the Fields alone, there died four hundred and twenty-one. 

But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out parishes, 
which being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper 
found more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe after- 
ward ; we perceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way, viz., 
by the parishes of Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch, and Bish- 
opsgate ; which last two parishes joining to Aldgate, Whitechapel, 
and Stepney, the infection came at length to spread its utmost rage 
and violence in those parts, even when it abated at the western 
parishes where it began. 

It was very strange to observe, that in this particular week, 
from the 4th to the nth of July, when, as I have observed, there 
died near four hundred of the plague in the parishes of St. Mar- 



THE PLAGUE TN LONDON. 363 

tin's and St. Giles's in the Fields only, there died in the parish of 
Aldgate but four, in the parish of Whitechapel three, in the parish 
of Stepney but one. 

Likewise in the next week, from the nth of July to the 18th, 
when the week's bill was 1761, yet there died no more of the 
plague, on the whole Southwark side of the water, than sixteen. 

But this face of things soon changed, and it began to thicken in 
Cripplegate parish especially, and in Clerkenwell ; so that by the 
second week in August, Cripplegate parish alone buried eight 
hundred and eighty-six, and Clerkenwell one hundred and fifty- 
five ; of the first, eight hundred and fifty might well be reckoned 
to die of the plague ; and of the last, the bill itself said, one hun- 
dred and forty-five were of the plague. 

During the month of July, and while, as I have observed, our 
part of the town seemed to be spared in comparison of the west 
part, I went ordinarily about the streets, as my business required, 
and particularly went gradually once in a day, or in two days, into 
the city, to my brother's house, which he had given me charge of, 
and to see it was safe ; and having the key in my pocket I used 
to go into the house, and over most of the rooms, to see that all 
was well ; for though it be something wonderful to tell, that 
any should have hearts so hardened, in the midst of such a 
calamity, as to rob and steal ; yet, certain it is, that all sorts of 
villanies, and even levities and debaucheries, were then practised 
in the town, as openly as ever, I will not say quite as frequently, 
because the number of people were many ways lessened. 

But the city itself began now to be visited too, I mean within 
the walls ; but the number of people there were, indeed, extremely 
lessened, by so great a multitude having been gone into the coun- 
try ; and even all this month of July they continued to flee, though 
not in such multitudes as formerly. In August, indeed, they fled 
in such a manner, that I began to think there would be really none 
but magistrates and servants left in the city. 

As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe, that the 
court removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to 



364 DANIEL DEFOE. 

Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them ; and the distem- 
per did not, as I heard of, so much as touch them ; for which 
I cannot say, that I ever saw they showed any great token of 
thankfulness, and hardly anything of reformation, though they did 
not want being told that their crying vices might, without breach 
of charity, be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible judg- 
ment upon the whole nation. 

The face of London was now indeed strangely altered, I mean 
the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, 
Southwark, and altogether ; for, as to the particular part called the 
city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected ; but in 
the whole, the face of things, I say, was much altered ; sorrow and 
sadness sat upon every face, and though some part were not yet 
overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned ; and as we saw it 
apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself, and his 
family, as in the utmost danger : were it possible to represent 
those times exactly, to those that did not see them, and give the 
reader due ideas of the horror that everywhere presented itself, it 
must make just impressions upon their minds, and fill them with 
surprise. London might well be said to be all in tears ; the 
mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody put on 
black, or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends ; 
but the voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets; the 
shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their 
houses, where their nearest relations were, perhaps dying, or just 
dead, were so frequent to be heard, as we passed the streets, that 
it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the worfd to hear 
them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, 
especially in the first part of the visitation ; for towards the latter 
end men's hearts were hardened, and death was so always before 
their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the 
loss of their friends, expecting that themselves should be sum- 
moned the next hour. 

Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, 
even when the sickness was chiefly there ; and as the thing was 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 365 

new to me, as well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising 
thing to see those streets, which were usually so thronged, now 
grown desolate, and so few people to be seen in them, that if I 
had been a stranger, and at a loss for my way, I might sometimes 
have gone the length of a whole street, I mean of the by-streets, 
and see 2 nobody to direct me, except watchmen set at the doors 
of such houses as were shut up, of which I shall speak presently. 

One day, being at that part of the town, on some special busi- 
ness, curiosity led me to observe things more than usually ; and 
indeed I walked a great way where I had no business ; I went up 
Holborn, and there the street was full of people ; but they walked 
in the middle of the great street, neither on one side or other, 
because, as I suppose, they would not mingle with anybody that 
came out of houses, or meet with smells and scents from houses 
that might be infected. 

The inns of court were all shut up, nor were very many of 
the lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln's-inn, or Gray's-inn, to be 
seen there. Everybody was at peace, there was no occasion for 
lawyers ; besides, it being in the time of the vacation too, they 
were generally gone into the country. Whole rows of houses in 
some places, were shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and only 
a watchman or two left. 

When I speak of rows of houses being shut up, I do not mean 
shut up by the magistrates ; but that great numbers of persons 
followed the court, by the necessity of their employments, and 
other dependencies ; and as others retired, really frighted with 
the distemper, it was a mere desolating of some of the streets : 
but the fright was not yet near so great in the city, abstractedly so 
called ; and particularly because, though they were at first in a 
most inexpressible consternation, yet, as I have observed, that 
the distemper intermitted often at first, so they were as it were 
alarmed, and unalarmed again, and this several times, till it began 
to be familiar to them ; and that even when it appeared violent, 
yet seeing it did not presently spread into the city, or the east or 

2 Defoe does not always observe grammatical correctness. 



366 DANIEL DEFOE. 

south parts, the people began to take courage, and to be, as I may 
say, a little hardened. It is true, a vast many people fled, as I have 
observed, yet they were chiefly from the west end of the town, 
and from that we call the heart of the city, that is to say, among 
the wealthiest of the people ; and such persons as were unin- 
cumbered with trades and business. But of the rest, the gener- 
ality stayed, and seemed to abide the worst ; so that in the place 
we call the liberties, and in the suburbs, in Southvvark, and in the 
east part, such as Wapping, Ratcliff, Stepney, Rotherhithe, and the 
like, the people generally stayed, except here and there a few 
wealthy families, who, as above, did not depend upon their 
business. 

It must not be forgot here, that the city and suburbs were prodig- 
iously full of people at the time of this visitation, I mean at the 
time that it began ; for though I have lived to see a farther 
increase, and mighty throngs of people settling in London, more 
than ever ; yet we had always a notion that numbers of people, 
which, the wars being over, the armies disbanded, and the royal 
family and the monarchy being restored, had flocked to London 
to settle in business, or to depend upon, and attend the court for 
rewards of services, preferments, and the like, was 2 such, that the 
town was computed to have in it above a hundred thousand 
people more than ever it held before ; nay, some took upon them 
to say, it had twice as many, because all the ruined families of the 
royal party flocked hither; all the soldiers set up trades here, 
and abundance of families settled here ; again, the court brought 
with it a great flux of pride and new fashions ; all people were 
gay and luxurious, and the joy of the restoration had brought a 
vast many families to London. 

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising 
time ; while the fears of the people were young, they were in- 
creased strangely by several odd accidents, which put altogether, it 
was really a wonder the whole body of the people did not rise as 
one man and abandon their dwellings, leaving the place as a 
space of ground designed by heaven for an Akeldama, doomed to 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 367 

be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that all that would 
be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but a few of 
these things ; but sure they were so many, and so many wizards 
and cunning people propagating them, that I have often won- 
dered there was any (women especially) left behind. 

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several 
months before the plague, as there did the year after, another, a 
little before the fire ; the old women, and the phlegmatic hypo- 
chondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call old 
women too, remarked, especially afterward though not till both 
those judgments were over, that those two comets passed directly 
over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain 
they imported something peculiar to the city alone. That the 
comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid colour, and 
its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow ; but that the comet before 
the fire, was bright and sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and 
its motion swift and furious, and that, accordingly, one foretold a 
heavy judgment, slow but severe, terrible, and frightful, as was the 
plague. But the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift and fiery, as 
was the conflagration ; nay, so particular some people were, that as 
they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, 3 they fancied that 
they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive 
the motion with their eye, but even they heard it, that it made a 
rushing mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance, 
and but just perceivable. 

I saw both these stars, and I must confess, had had so much of 
the common notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to 
look upon them as the forerunners and warnings of God's judg- 
ments, and especially when the plague had followed the first, I 
yet saw another of the like kind, I could not but say God had not 
yet sufficiently scourged the city. 

The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely in- 
creased by the error of the times, in which, I think, the people, 
from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to 

3 The great fire of 1666. 



368 DANIEL DEFOE. 

prophecies, and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives' 
tales, than ever they were before or since : whether this unhappy 
temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got 
money by it, that is to say, by printing predictions and prognosti- 
cations, I know not, but certain it is, books frighted them terribly ; 
such as Lily's Almanack, Gadbury's Astrological Predictions, Poor 
Robin's Almanack, and the like; also several pretended religious 
books, one entitled, Come out of Her my People ; lest ye be par- 
taker of her Plagues ; another called, Fair Warning ; another 
Britain's Remembrancer, and many such ; all, or most part of 
which, foretold directly or covertly, the ruin of the city ; nay, some 
were so enthusiastically bold, as to run about the streets with their 
oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city ; 
and one in particular, who like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the 
streets, Yet forty days and London shall be destroyed. I will not 
be positive whether he said yet forty days, or yet a few days. 
Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his 
waist, crying day and night, like a man that Josephus mentions, 
who cried, Woe to Jerusalem ! a little before the destruction of 
that city ; so this poor naked creature cried, O ! the great and the 
dreadful God ! and said no more, but repeated those words con- 
tinually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace, 
and nobody could ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any 
sustenance, at least that ever I could hear of. I met this poor 
creature several times in the streets, and would have spoke to him, 
but he would not enter into speech with me, or any one else ; but 
kept on his dismal cries continually. 

These things terrified the people to the last degree ; and espe- 
cially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already, they 
found one or two in the bills, dead of the plague at St. Giles's. 
Next to these public things, were the dreams of old women ; or, 
I should say, the interpretation of old women upon other peoples' 
dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their 
wits. Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there 
would be such a plague in London, so that the living would not 






THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 369 

be able to bury the dead ; others saw apparitions in the air, and 
I must be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of charity, 
that they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never 
appeared ; but the imagination of the people was really turned 
wayward and possessed ; and no wonder if they who were poring 
continually at the clouds, saw shapes and figures, representations 
and appearances, which had nothing in them but air and vapour. 
Here they told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand, com- 
ing out of a cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city. 
There they saw hearses and coffins in the air carrying to be 
buried. And there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied 
and the like ; just as the imagination of the poor terrified people 
furnished them with matter to work upon. 

So hypochondriac fancies represent 
Ships, armies, battles in the firmament; 
Till steady eyes the exhalations solve, 
And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve. 

I could fill this account with the strange relations such people 
give every day of what they have seen ; and every one was so 
positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that there 
was no contradicting them without breach of friendship, or being 
accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, and profane 
and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague 
was begun, otherwise than as I have said in St. Giles's, I think it 
was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined 
with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up 
into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her, 
which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his 
hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described 
every part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and 
the form, and the poor people came into it so eagerly and with so 
much readiness : Yes ! I see it all plainly, says one, there's the 
sword as plain as can be ; another saw the angel ; one saw his 
very face, and cried out, What a glorious creature he was ! One 



370 DANIEL DEFOE. 

saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as the 
rest, but, perhaps, not with so much willingness to be imposed 
upon ; and I said, indeed, that I could see nothing but a white 
cloud, bright on one side, by the shining of the sun upon the other 
part. The woman endeavoured to show it to me, but could not 
make me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had, I must 
have lied : but the woman turning to me looked me in the face 
and fancied I laughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, 
for I really did not laugh, but was seriously reflecting how the poor 
people were terrified by the force of their own imagination. How- 
ever, she turned to me, called me profane fellow, and a scoffer, 
told me that it was a time of God's anger, and dreadful judgments 
were approaching, and that despisers, such as I, should wander 
\_sic\ and perish. 

The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she, and I 
found there was no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, 
and that I should be rather mobbed by them than be able to 
undeceive them. So I left them, and this appearance passed for 
as real as the blazing star itself. 

Another encounter I had in the open day also ; and this was in 
going through a narrow passage from Petty- France into Bishops- 
gate churchyard, by a row of almshouses ; there are two church- 
yards to Bishopsgate church or parish, one we go over to pass 
from the place called Petty-France into Bishopsgate street, com- 
ing out just by the church door, the other is on the side of the 
narrow passage where the almshouses are on the left, and a dwarf 
wall with a palisade on it on the right hand, and the city wall on 
the other side more to the right. 

In this narrow passage stands a man looking through the pali- 
sades into the burying-place, and as many people as the narrow- 
ness of the place would admit to stop without hindering the pas- 
sage of others, and he was talking mighty eagerly to them, and 
pointing now to one place, then to another, and affirming that he 
saw a ghost walking upon such a gravestone there ; he described 
the shape, the posture, and the movement of it so exactly, that it 






THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 371 

was the greatest amazement to him in the world that everybody 
did not see it as well as he. On a sudden he would cry, There it 
is ! Now it comes this way ! then, Tis turned back ! till at length 
he persuaded the people into so firm a belief of it, that one fancied 
he saw it ; and thus he came every day making a strange hubbub, 
considering it was so narrow a passage, till Bishopsgate clock 
struck eleven, and then the ghost would seem to start, and, as if he 
were called away, disappeared on a sudden. 

I looked earnestly every way and at the very moment that this 
man directed, but could not see the least appearance of anything, 
but so positive was this poor man that he gave them vapours in 
abundance, and sent them away trembling and frightened, till at 
length few people that knew of it cared to go through that passage, 
and hardly anybody by night on any account whatever. 

This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses, 
and to the ground, and to the people, plainly intimating, or else 
they so understanding it, that abundance of people should come 
to be buried in that churchyard, as indeed happened, but then 
he saw such aspects, I must acknowledge I never believed, nor 
could I see anything of it myself, though I looked most earnestly 
to see it if possible. 

Some endeavours were used to suppress the printing of such 
books as terrified the people, and to frighten the dispensers of 
them, some of whom were taken up, but nothing done in it, as I 
am informed, the government being unwilling to exasperate the 
people, who were, as I may say, all out of their wits already. 
Neither can I acquit those ministers that, in their sermons, rather 
sunk than lifted up the hearts of their hearers ; many of them, I 
doubt not, did it for the strengthening the resolution of the people, 
and especially for quickening them to repentance ; but it cer- 
tainly answered not their end, at least not in proportion to the 
injury it did another way. 

One mischief always introduces another ; these terrors and ap- 
prehensions of the people led them to a thousand weak, foolish, 
and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really 



372 DANIEL DEFOE. 

wicked to encourage them to, and this was running about to 
fortune-tellers, cunning men, and astrologers, to know their for- 
tunes, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their fortunes told 
them, their nativities calculated, and the like, and this folly pres- 
ently made the town swarm with a wicked generation of pretend- 
ers to magic ; to the black art, as they called it, and I know not 
what ; nay, to a thousand worse dealings with the devil than they 
were really guilty of, and this trade grew so open and so generally 
practised, that it became common to have signs and inscriptions 
set up at doors, Here lives a fortune-teller ; Here lives an 
astrologer ; Here you may have your nativity calculated ; and the 
like ; and friar Bacon's 4 brazen-head, which was the usual sign of 
these peoples' dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or 
else the sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin's head, and the like. 

With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous stuff these oracles of the 
devil pleased and satisfied the people, I really know not, but cer- 
tain it is, that innumerable attendants crowded about their doors 
every day : and if but a grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a band, and 
a black cloak, which was the habit those quack-conjurers gener- 
ally went in, was but seen in the streets, the people would follow 
them in crowds and ask them questions as they went along. 

The case of poor servants was very dismal, as I shall have occa- 
sion to mention again, by and by ; for it was apparent a prodig- 
ious number of them would be turned away, and it was so, and 
of them abundance perished, and particularly those whom these 
false prophets flattered with hopes that they should be kept in 
their services and carried with their masters and mistresses into 
the country ; and had not public charity provided for these poor 
creatures, whose number was exceeding great, and in all cases 
of this nature must be so, they would have been in the worst con- 
dition of any people in the city. 

These things agitated the minds of the common people for many 
months while the first apprehensions were upon them, and while 

4 Roger Bacon, the philosopher (1214-92), who was thought to practise 
magic. See Greene's play, " Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay." 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 373 

the plague was not, as I may say, yet broken out ; but I must 
also not forget that the more serious part of the inhabitants be- 
haved after another manner ; the government encouraged their 
devotion, and appointed public prayers and days of fasting and 
humiliation, to make public confession of sin, and implore the 
mercy of God, to avert the dreadful judgment which hangs over 
their heads ; and, it is not to be expressed with what alacrity the 
people of all persuasions embraced the occasion, how they flocked 
to the churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that 
there was often no coming near, even to the very doors of the 
largest churches : also, there were daily prayers appointed morn- 
ing and evening at several churches, and days of private praying 
at other places, at all which the people attended, I say, with an 
uncommon devotion ; several private families also, as well of one 
opinion as another, kept family fasts, to which they admitted their 
near relations only; so that, in a word, those people who were 
really serious and religious, applied themselves in a truly Christian 
manner to the proper work of repentance and humiliation, as a 
Christian people ought to do. 

Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in 
these things ; the very court, which was then gay and luxurious, 
put on a face of just concern for the public danger. All the plays 
and interludes, which, after the manner of the French court, had 
been set up and began to increase among us, were forbid to act ; 
the gaming-tables, public dancing rooms, and music houses, which 
multiplied and began to debauch the manners of the people, were 
shut up and suppressed ; and the jack-puddings, merry-andrews, 
puppet-shows, rope-dancers, and such-like doings, # which had 
bewitched the common people, shut their shops, finding indeed 
no trade, for the minds of the people were agitated with other 
things, and a kind of sadness and horror at these things sat upon 
the countenances even of the common people ; death was before 
their eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of 
mirth and diversions. 

But even these wholesome reflections, which, rightly managed, 



374 DANIEL DEFOE. 

would have most happily led the people to fall upon their knees, 
make confession of their sins, and look up to their merciful Saviour 
for pardon, imploring his compassion cm them in such a time of 
their distress, by which we might have been as a second Nineveh, 
had a quite contrary extreme in the common people : who, igno- 
rant and stupid in their reflections, as they were brutishly wicked 
and thoughtless before, were now led by their fright to extremes 
of folly ; and, as I said before, that they ran to conjurers and 
witches and all sorts of deceivers, to know what should become of 
them, who fed their fears, and kept them always alarmed and 
awake, on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets, so they 
were as mad upon their running after quacks and mountebanks, 
and every practising old woman for medicines and remedies, stor- 
ing themselves with such multitudes of pills, potions, and preserva- 
tives, as they were called, that they not only spent their money 
but poisoned themselves beforehand for fear of the poison of the 
infection, and prepared their bodies for the plague instead of pre- 
serving them against it. On the other hand, it was incredible, 
and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of 
streets were plastered over with doctors' bills, and papers of igno- 
rant fellows quacking and tampering in physic, and inviting people 
to come to them for remedies, which was generally set off with 
such flourishes as these, viz., Infallible preventitive pills against 
the plague. Never-failing preservatives against the infection. 
Sovereign cordials against the corruption of air. Exact regula- 
tion for the conduct of the body in case of infection. Antipesti- 
lential pills. Incomparable drink against the plague, never found 
out before. # An universal remedy for the plague. The only 
true plague-water. The Royal Antidote against all kinds of 
infection : and such a number more that I cannot reckon up, and 
if I could, would fill a book of themselves to set them down. 

Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for 
direction and advice in the case of infection ; these had specious 
titles also, such as these : 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDOX. 375 

An eminent High- Dutch physician, newly come over from Hol- 
land, where he resided during all the time of the great plague, 
last year, in Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that 
actualfy had the plague upon them. 

An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice 
secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great 
experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague 
there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day. 

An ancient gentlewoman having practised with great success in the 
late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice only to the 
female sex. To be spoken with, &c. 

An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of 
antidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has, after 
forty years' practice, arrived at such skill as may, with God's 
blessing, direct persons how to prevent being touched by any 
contagious distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis. 

I take notice of these by way of specimen ; I could give you 
two or three dozen of the like, and yet have abundance left 
behind. It is sufficient from these to apprise any one of the 
humour of those times, and how a set of thieves and pickpockets 
not only robbed and cheated the poor people of their money, but 
poisoned their bodies with odious and fatal preparations ; some 
with mercury, and some with other things as bad, perfectly re- 
mote from the thing pretended to, and rather hurtful than ser- 
viceable to the body in case an infection followed. 

I cannot omit a subtlety of one of those quack operators with 
which he gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did 
nothing for them without money. He had, it seems, added to his 
bills, which he gave out in the streets, this advertisement in cap- 
ital letters, viz., He gives advice to the poor for nothing. 

Abundance of people came to him accordingly, to whom he 
made a great many fine speeches, examined them of the state of 
their health, and of the constitution of their bodies, and told them 
many good things to do which were of no great moment ; but 



376 DANIEL DEFOE. 

the issue and conclusion of all was, that he had a preparation, 
which, if they took such a quantity of, every morning, he would 
pawn his life that they should never have the plague, no, though 
they lived in the house with people that were infected. This 
made the people all resolve to have it, but then, the price of that 
was so much, I think it was half-a-crown ; But, sir, says one poor 
woman, I am a poor almswoman, and am kept by the parish, and 
your bills say, you give the poor your help for nothing. Ay, 
good woman, says the doctor, so I do, as I published there, I give 
my advice, but not my physic ! Alas, sir, says she, that is a snare 
laid for the poor then, for you give them your advice for nothing ; 
that is to say, you advise them gratis, to buy your physic for their 
money, so does every shopkeeper his wares. Here the woman 
began to give him ill words, and stood at his door all that day, 
telling her tale to all the people that came, till the doctor, finding 
she turned away his customers, was obliged to call her up stairs 
again and gave her his box of physic for nothing, which, perhaps 
too, was good for nothing when she had it. 

But, to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be 
imposed upon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mounte- 
bank. There is no doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised 
great gains out of the miserable people, for we daily found the 
crowds that ran after them were infinitely greater, and their doors 
were more thronged than those of Dr. Brooks, Dr. Upton, Dr. 
Hodges, Dr. Berwick, or any, though the most famous men of the 
time ; and I was told that some of them got 5/. a day by their 
physic. 

But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may 
serve to give an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people 
at that time, and triis was their following a worse sort of deceivers 
than any of these, for these petty thieves only deluded them to 
pick their pockets and get their money, in which their wickedness, 
whatever it was, lay chiefly on the side of the deceiver's deceiv- 
ing, not upon the deceived ; but in this part I am going to men- 
tion, it lay chiefly in the people deceived, or equally in both ; and 



THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 377 

this was in wearing charms, philters, exorcisms, amulets, and I know 
not what preparations to fortify the body against the plague, as if 
the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of a possession of 
an evil spirit, and it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the 
zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or 
figures written on them, as particularly the word Abracadabra, 
formed in triangle or pyramid, thus : 

ABRACADABRA 
ABRACADABR Others had the Jesuits' 

ABRACADAB mark in a cross : 

ABRACADA IH 

ABRACAD S 

ABR AC A 
ABR AC 
A B R A Others had nothing but this 

ABR mark, thus : 

AB + 

A 

I might spend a great deal of my time in exclamations against 
the follies, and indeed the wickedness of those things, in a time of 
such danger, in a matter of such consequence as this of a national 
infection ; but my memorandums of these things relate rather to 
take notice of the fact, and mention only that it was so. How the 
poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many 
of them were afterwards carried away in the dead-carts, and thrown 
into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms 
and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of 
as we go along. 

All this was the effect of the hurry the people were in, after the 
first notion of the plague being at hand was among them, and 
which may be said to be from about Michaelmas, 1664, but more par- 
ticularly after the two men died in St. Giles's in the beginning of 
December ; and again after another alarm in February, for when 



378 DANIEL DEFOE. 

the plague evidently spread itself, they soon began to see the folly 
of trusting to these unperforming creatures, who had gulled them 
of their money, and then their fears worked another way, namely, 
to amazement and stupidity, not knowing what course to take or 
what to do, either to help or to relieve themselves, but they ran 
about from one neighbour's house to another, and even in the 
streets, from one door to another, with repeated cries of, Lord, 
have mercy upon us, what shall we do ? 

I am supposing now the plague to have begun, as I have said, 
and that the magistrates began to take the condition of the people 
into their serious consideration ; what they did as to the regula- 
tion of the inhabitants, and of infected families, I shall speak to 
by itself; but, as to the affair of health, it is proper to mention 
here my having seen the foolish humour of the people in running 
after quacks, mountebanks, wizards, and fortune-tellers, which 
they did as above even to madness. The lord mayor, a very sober 
and religious gentleman, appointed physicians and surgeons for 
the relief of the poor, I mean the diseased poor, and, in particular, 
ordered the college of physicians to publish directions for cheap 
remedies for the poor in all the circumstances of the distemper. 
This indeed was one of the most charitable and judicious things 
that could be done at that time, for this drove the people from 
haunting the doors of every disperser of bills, and from taking 
down blindly and without consideration, poison for physic, and 
death instead of life. 

This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of 
the whole college, and as it was particularly calculated for the use 
of the poor, and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so that 
everybody might see it, and copies were given gratis to all that 
desired it : but as it is public and to be seen on all occasions, I 
need not give the reader of this the trouble of it. 



XVIII. 

HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLING- 
BROKE. 

(1678-1751.) 

LETTERS ON THE STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 

[Written in 1735. J 
OF THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 

Letter II. 
Concerning the true use and advantages of it. 

Let me say something of history in general before I descend 
into the consideration of particular parts of it, or of the various 
methods of study, or of the different views of those that apply 
themselves to it, as I had begun to do in my former letter. 

The love of history seems inseparable from human nature 
because it seems inseparable from self-love. The same principle 
in this instance carries us forward and backward, to future and 
to past ages. We imagine that the things which affect us, must 
affect posterity : this sentiment runs through mankind, from Caesar 
down to the parish clerk in Pope's Miscellany. We are fond of 
preserving, as far as it is in our frail power, the memory of our 
own adventures, of those of our own time, and of those that pre- 
ceded it. Rude heaps of stone have been raised, and ruder 
hymns have been composed for this purpose, by nations who had 
not yet the use of arts and letters. To go no farther back, the 
triumphs of Odin were celebrated in runic songs, and the feats of 
our British ancestors were recorded in those of their bards. The 

379 



380 LORD BOLINGBROKE. 

savages of America have the same custom at this day : and long 
historical ballads of their huntings and their wars are sung at all 
their festivals. There is no need of saying how this passion 
grows, among civilized nations, in proportion to the means of 
gratifying it : but let us observe that the same principle of nature 
directs us as strongly, and more generally as well as more early, 
to indulge our own curiosity, instead of preparing to gratify that 
of others. The child hearkens with delight to the tales of his 
nurse : he learns to read, and he devours with eagerness fabulous 
legends and novels : in riper years he applies himself to history, 
or to that which he takes for history, to authorized romance : and, 
even in age, the desire of knowing what has happened to other 
men, yields to the desire alone of relating what has happened to 
ourselves. Thus history, true or false, speaks to our passions 
always. What pity is it, my lord, that even the best should speak 
to our understanding so seldom ? That it does so, we have none 
to blame but ourselves. Nature has done her part. She has 
opened this study to every man who can read and think : and 
what she has made the most agreeable, reason can make the most 
useful, application of our minds. But if we consult our reason, we 
shall be far from following the examples of our fellow-creatures, 
in this as in most other cases, who are so proud of being rational. 
We shall neither read to soothe our indolence, nor to gratify our 
vanity : as little shall we content ourselves to drudge like gram- 
marians and critics, that others may be able to study with greater 
ease and profit, like philosophers and statesmen : as little shall we 
affect the slender merit of becoming great scholars at the expense 
of groping all our lives in the dark mazes of antiquity. All these 
mistake the true drift of study, and the true use of history. 
Nature gave us curiosity to excite the industry of our minds ; but 
she never intended it should be made the principal, much less 
the sole, object of their application. The true and proper object 
of this application is a constant improvement in private and in 
public virtue. An application to any study, that tends neither 
directly nor indirectly to make us better men and better citizens, 



STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 381 

is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, to use an 
expression of Tillotson : and the knowledge we acquire by it is a 
creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more. This creditable kind 
of ignorance is, in my opinion, the whole benefit which the gener- 
ality of men, even the most learned, reap from the study of his- 
tory : and yet the study of history seems to me, of all others the 
most proper to train us up to private and public virtue. 

Your lordship may very well be ready by this time, and after so 
much bold censure on my part, to ask me, what then is the true 
use of history? in what respects it may serve to. make us better 
and wiser? and what method is to be pursued in the study of it, 
for attaining these great ends? I will answer you by quoting 
what I have read somewhere or other, in Dionysius Halicarn, 1 I 
think, that history is philosophy teaching by examples. We need 
but to cast our eyes on the world, and we shall see the daily force 
of example : we need but to turn them inward, and we shall soon 
discover why example has this force : " Fauci prudentia" says 
Tacitus, " honesta ab deterioribus, utilia ab noxiis discernunt : 
plures aliorum eventis docenlur." 2 Such is the imperfection of 
human understanding, such the frail temper of our minds, that 
abstract or general propositions, though ever so true, appear 
obscure or doubtful to us very often, till they are explained by 
examples : and that the wisest lessons in favour of virtue go but 
a little way to convince the judgment, and determine the will, 
unless they are enforced by the same means ; and we are obliged 
to apply to ourselves what we see happen to other men. Instruc- 
tions by precept have the further disadvantage of coming on the 
authority of others, and frequently require a long deduction of 
reasoning. "Homines amplius oat lis, quam auribus, credunt : 
longum iter est per prcecepta, breve et efficax per exempla." 3 The 

1 Halicarnassensis, i.e., of Halicarnassus in Caria, a district of Asia Minor. 

2 Few by prudence distinguish good from bad, the useful from the injurious ; 
more are taught by the fortunes of others. — TACITUS, Annals, IV. 33. 

3 Men believe more from seeing than hearing; the way is long by precepts, 
short and effective by examples. — Seneca, Epistles, 6, 5. 



382 LORD BOLINGBROKE. 

reason of this judgment, which I quote from one of Seneca's 
epistles, in confirmation of my own opinion rests, I think, on this ; 
that when examples are pointed out to us, there is a kind of 
appeal, with which we are flattered, made to our senses, as well as 
our understandings. The instruction comes then upon our own 
authority : we frame the precept after our own experience, and 
yield to fact, when we resist speculation. But this is not the only 
advantage of instruction by example ; for example appeals not to 
our understanding alone, but to our passions likewise. Example 
assuages these, or animates them ; sets passion on the side of 
judgment, and makes the whole man of a piece, which is more 
than the strongest reasoning and the clearest demonstration can 
do : and thus forming habits by repetition, example secures the 
observance of those precepts which example insinuated. Is it not 
Pliny, my lord, who says, that the gentlest, he should have added 
the most effectual, way of commanding, is by example? "Mitins 
jubetur exemplo." 4 The harshest orders are softened by example, 
and tyranny itself becomes persuasive. What pity it is that so few 
princes have learned this way of commanding ? But again : the 
force of examples is not confined to those alone that pass imme- 
diately under our sight : the examples that memory suggests, have 
the same effect in their degree, and an habit of recalling them will 
soon produce the habit of imitating them. In the same epistle, 
from whence I cited a passage just now, Seneca says that Cleanthes 
had never become so perfect a copy of Zeno, if he had not passed 
his life with him ; that Plato, Aristotle, and the other philosophers 
of that school profited more by the example, than by the discourse 
of Socrates. (But here, by the way, Seneca mistook ; for Socrates 
died two years according to some, and four years, according to 
others, before the birth of Aristotle : 5 and his mistake might come 
from the inaccuracy of those who collected for him ; as Erasmus 

4 Lit., it is commanded more gently by example. — PLINY. [Cf. Pliny, Pane- 
gyricus,XLY. 6.: Melius homines exempli* docentur ■=. Men are taught better 

by examples.~\ 

5 Socrates died B.C. 399; Aristotle was born B.C. 384. 



STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 383 

observes, after Quintilian, in his judgment on Seneca.) But be 
this, which was scarce worth a parenthesis, as it will; he adds 
that Metrodorus, Hermachus and Polysenus, men of great note, 
were formed by living under the same roof with Epicurus, not 
by frequenting his school. These are instances of the force of 
immediate example. But your lordship knows that the citizens of 
Rome placed the images of their ancestors in the vestibule of 
their houses ; so that, whenever they went in or out, these ven- 
erable bustoes met their eyes, and recalled the glorious actions of 
the dead, to fire the living, to excite them to imitate, and even to 
emulate their great forefathers. The success answered the design. 
The virtue of one generation was transfused, by the magic of 
example, into several : and a spirit of heroism was maintained 
through many ages of that commonwealth. Now these are so 
many instances of the force of remote example ; and from all 
these instances we may conclude that examples of both kinds are 
necessary. 

The school of example, my lord, is the world : and the masters 
of this school are history and experience. I am far from con- 
tending that the former is preferable to the latter. I think upon 
the whole otherwise : but this I say, that the former is absolutely 
necessary to prepare us for the latter, and to accompany us whilst 
we are under the discipline of the latter, that is, through the whole 
course of our lives. No doubt some few men may be quoted, to 
whom nature gave what art and industry can give to no man. 
But such examples will prove nothing against me, because I admit 
that the study of history, without experience, is insufficient ; but 
assert that experience itself is so without genius. Genius is 
preferable to the other two ; but I would wish to find the three 
together : for how great soever a genius may be, and how much 
soever he may acquire new light and heat, as he proceeds in his 
rapid course, certain it is that he will never shine with the full 
lustre, nor shed the full influence he is capable of, unless to his 
own experience he adds the experience of other men and other 
ages. Genius, without the improvement, at least, of experience, is 



384 LORD BOLINGBROKE. 

what comets once were thought to be, a blazing meteor, irregular 
in his course, and dangerous in his approach ; of no use to any 
system, and able to destroy any. Mere sons of earth, if they 
have experience without any knowledge of the history of the 
world, are but half scholars in the science of mankind. And if 
they are conversant in history without experience, they are worse 
than ignorant; they are pedants, always incapable, sometimes 
meddling and presuming. The man who has all three, is an 
honour to his country, and a public blessing : and such, I trust, 
your lordship will be in this century, as your great-grandfather G 
was in the last. 

I have insisted a little the longer on this head, and have made 
these distinctions the rather, because though I attribute a great 
deal more than many will be ready to allow to the study of his- 
tory ; yet I would not willingly even seem to fall into the ridicule 
of ascribing to it such extravagant effects as several have done, 
from Tully down to Casaubon, La Mothe le Vayer, and other 
modern pedants. When Tully informs us, in the second book of 
his Tusculan disputations, that the first Scipio Africanus had 
always in his hands the works of Xenophon, 7 he advances nothing 
but what is probable and reasonable. To say nothing of the 
retreat of the ten thousand, nor of other parts of Xenophon's 
writings ; the images of virtue, represented in that admirable 
picture of Cyropaedia, were proper to entertain a soul that was 
fraught with virtue, and Cyrus was worthy to be imitated by 
Scipio. So Selim emulated Caesar, whose Commentaries were 
translated for his use, against the customs of the Turks : so Caesar 
emulated Alexander ; and Alexander, Achilles. There is nothing 
ridiculous here, except the use that is made of this passage by 
those who quote it. But what the same Tully says, in the fourth 
[second] book of his academical disputations, concerning Lucul- 
lus, seems to me very extraordinary : u In Asiam f actus imperator 

6 The Earl of Clarendon. 

7 CiCEK \ Tusculan Disputations, Book II., Chap. 26 (Sect. 62), referring 
to Xenophon, Cyrop., I. 6, 25. 



STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 385 

vcnit, cum esset Roma profectus rei militaris rudis," (one would 
be ready to ascribe so sudden a change, and so vast an improve- 
ment, to nothing less than knowledge infused by inspiration, if we 
were not assured in the same place that they were effected by 
very natural means, by such as it is in every man's power to 
employ) u parti m percontando a peritis , partim in rebus gestis legen- 
dis." 8 Lucullus, according to this account, verified the reproach 
on the Roman nobility, which Sallust puts into the mouth of 
Marius. But as I discover the passion of Marius, and his preju- 
dices to the patricians, in one case ; so I discover, methinks, the 
cunning of Tully, and his partiality to himself, in the other. Lucul- 
lus, after he had been chosen consul, obtained by intrigue the 
government of Cilicia, and so put himself into a situation of com- 
manding the Roman army against Mithridates : Tully had the 
same government afterwards, and though he had no Mithridates, 
nor any other enemy of consequence, opposed to him ; though all 
his military feats consisted in surprising and pillaging a parcel of 
Highlanders and wild Cilicians ; yet he assumed the airs of a con- 
queror, and described his actions in so pompous a style, that the 
account becomes burlesque. He laughs, indeed, in one of his 
letters to Atticus, at his generalship : but if we turn to those he 
writ to Ccelius Rums, and to Cato, upon this occasion, or to those 
wherein he expresses to Atticus his resentment against Cato, for 
not proposing in his favour the honors usually decreed to con- 
querors, we may see how vanity turned his head, and how impu- 
dently he insisted on obtaining a triumph. Is it any strain now 
to suppose, that he meant to insinuate, in the passage I have 
quoted about Lucullus, that the difference between him and the 
former governor of Cilicia, even in military merit, arose from the 
different conjuncture alone ; and that Lucullus could not have 
done in Cilicia, at that time, more than he himself did ? Cicero 
had read and questioned at least as much as Lucullus, and would 

8 Though he had started from Rome inexperienced in military affairs, he 
came into Asia having been made a general ; partly by inquiring of those who 
were skilled, partly by reading history. — Cicero, Acad., II. I, i. 



386 LORD BOLINGBROKE. 

therefore have appeared as great a captain, if he had had as great 
a prince as Mithridates to encounter. But the truth is, that Lucul- 
lus was made a great captain by theory, or the study of history, 
alone, no more than Ferdinand of Spain and Alphonsus of Naples 
were cured of desperate distempers by reading Livy and Quintus 
Curtius : a silly tale, which Bodin, Amyot, and others have picked 
up and propagated. Lucullus had served in his youth against the 
Marsi, probably in other wars, and Sylla took early notice of him : 
he went into the east with this general, and had a great share in 
his confidence. He commanded in several expeditions. It was 
he who restored the Coiophonians to their liberty and who pun- 
ished the revolt of the people of Mytelene. Thus we see that 
Lucullus was formed by experience, as well as study, and by an 
experience gained in those very countries, where he gathered so 
many laurels afterwards in fighting against the same enemy. The 
late duke of Marlborough never read Xenophon, most certainly, 
nor the relation perhaps of any modern wars ; but he served in 
his youth under monsieur de Turenne, and I have heard that he 
was taken notice of in those early days by that great man. He 
afterwards commanded in an expedition to Ireland, served a 
campaign or two, if I mistake not, under king William in Flan- 
ders : and besides these occasions, had none of gaining experience 
in war, till he came to the head of our armies in one thousand 
seven hundred and two, and triumphed, not over Asiatic troops, 
but over the veteran armies of France. The Roman had on his 
side genius and experience cultivated by study : the Briton had 
genius improved by experience, and no more. The first there- 
fore is not an example of what study can do alone ; but the lat- 
ter is an example of what genius and experience can do without 
study. They can do much, to be sure, when the first is given in a 
superior degree. But such examples are very rare : and when 
they happen, it will be still true, that they would have had fewer 
blemishes, and would have come nearer to the perfection of private 
and public virtue, in all the arts of peace and achievements of 
war, if the views of such men had been enlarged, and their senti- 



STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 3S7 

ments ennobled, by acquiring that cast of thought, and that tem- 
per of mind, which will grow up and become habitual in every 
man who applies himself early to the study of history, as well as to 
the study of philosophy, with the intention of being wiser and 
better, without the affectation of being more learned. 

The temper of the mind is formed, and a certain turn given to 
our ways of thinking ; in a word, the seeds of that moral charac- 
ter which cannot wholly alter the natural character, but may cor- 
rect the evil and improve the good that is in it, or do the very 
contrary, are sown betimes, and much sooner than is commonly 
supposed. It is equally certain that we shall gather or not gather 
experience, be the better or the worse for this experience, when 
we come into the world and mingle amongst mankind, according 
to the temper of mind, and the turn of thought, that we have 
acquired beforehand, and bring along with us. They will tincture 
all our future acquisitions ; so that the very same experience, 
which secures the judgment of one man, or excites him to virtue, 
shall lead another into error, or plunge him into vice. From 
hence it follows, that the study of history has in this respect a 
double advantage. If experience alone can make us perfect in 
our parts, experience cannot begin to teach them till we are act- 
ually on the stage : whereas, by a previous application to this 
study, we con them over at least, before we appear there : we are 
not quite unprepared, we learn our parts sooner, and we learn 
them better. 

Let me explain what I mean by an example. There is scarce 
any folly or vice more epidemical among the sons of men, than 
that ridiculous and hurtful vanity, by which the people of each 
country are apt to prefer themselves to those of every other ; 
and to make their own customs, and manners, and opinions, the 
standards of right and wrong, of true and false. The Chinese 
mandarins were strangely surprised, and almost incredulous, when 
the Jesuits showed them how small a figure their empire made in 
the general map of the world. The Samojedes wondered much 
at the Czar of Muscovy for not living among them : and the Hot^ 



388 LORD BOLING BROKE. 

tentot, who returned from Europe, stripped himself naked as soon 
as he came home, put on his bracelets of guts and garbage, and 
grew stinking and lousy as fast as he could. Now nothing can 
contribute more to prevent us from being tainted with this vanity, 
than to accustom ourselves early to contemplate the different na- 
tions of the earth in that vast map which history spreads before 
us, in their rise and their fall, in their barbarous and civilized 
states, in the likeness and unlikeness of them all to one another, 
and of each to itself. By frequently renewing this prospect to the 
mind, the Mexican with his cap and coat of feathers, sacrificing a 
human victim to his god, will not appear more savage to our eyes, 
than the Spaniard with an hat on his head, and a gonilla " round 
his neck, sacrificing whole nations to his ambition, his avarice, 
and even the wantonness of his cruelty. I might shew, by a mul- 
titude of other examples, how history prepares us for experience, 
and guides us in it : and many of these would be both curious and 
important. I might likewise bring several other instances, wherein 
history serves to purge the mind of those national partialities and 
prejudices that we are apt to contract in our education, and that 
experience for the most part rather confirms than removes : be- 
cause it is for the most part confined, like our education. But I 
apprehend growing too prolix, and shall therefore conclude this 
head by observing, that though an early and proper application to 
the study of history will contribute extremely to keep our minds 
free from a ridiculous partiality in favor of our own country, and a 
vicious prejudice against others ; yet the same study will create in 
us a preference of affection to our own country. There is a story 
told of Abgarus. 9 He brought several beasts taken in different 
places to Rome, they say, and let them loose before Augustus : 
every beast ran immediately to that part of the Circus, where a 
parcel of earth taken from his native soil had been laid. " Credat 
Jicdceus Ape lla^ 10 This tale might pass on Josephus ; for in him, 
I believe, I read it : but surely the love of our country is a lesson 

9 Title of the kings of Edessa in Mesopotamia, as Pharaoh in Egypt. 
10 Let the Jew Apella believe it. — Horace, Satires, I. 5. ioo. u cape? 






STUDY AND USE OF HIS TORY. 389 

of reason, not an institution of nature. Education and habit, ob- 
ligation and interest, attach us to it, not instinct. It is however so 
necessary to be cultivated, and the prosperity of all societies, as 
well as the grandeur of some, depends upon it so much, that 
orators by their eloquence, and poets by their enthusiasm, have 
endeavoured to work up this precept of morality into a principle 
of passion. But the examples which we find in history, improved 
by the lively descriptions, and the just applauses or censures of 
historians, will have a much better and more permanent effect, 
than declamation, or song, or the dry ethics of mere philosophy. 
In fine, to converse with historians is to keep good company : 
many of them were excellent men, and those who were not such, 
have taken care however to appear such in their writings. It 
must be therefore of great use to prepare ourselves by this conver- 
sation for that of the world : and to receive our first impressions, 
and to acquire our first habits, in a scene where images of virtue 
and vice are continually represented to us in the colors that be- 
long properly to them, before we enter on another scene, where 
virtue and vice are too often confounded, and what belongs to 
one is ascribed to the other. 

Besides the advantage of beginning our acquaintance with man- 
kind sooner, and of bringing with us into the world and the 
business of it, such a cast of thought and such a temper of mind, 
as will enable us to make a better use of our experience ; there is 
this further advantage in the study of history, that the improve- 
ment we make by it extends to more objects, and is made at the 
expence of other men : whereas that improvement, which is the 
effect of our own experience, is confined to fewer objects, and is 
made at our own expence. To state the account fairly therefore 
between these two improvements ; though the latter be the more 
valuable, yet allowance being made on one side for the much 
greater number of examples that history presents to us, and 
deduction being made on the other of the price we often pay for 
our experience, the value of the former will rise in proportion. 
" I have recorded these things," says Polybius, after giving an 



390 LORD BOLINGRROKE. 

account of the defeat of Regulus, " that they who read these com- 
mentaries may be rendered better by them ; for all men have two 
ways of improvement, one arising from their own experience, and 
one from the experience of others." "Evidentior quidem ilia est, 
gucc per propria ducit infortunia ; at tutior ilia, qua per aliena. ,,n 
I use Casaubon's translation. Polybius goes on and concludes, 
" that since the first of these ways exposes us to great labor and 
peril, whilst the second works the same good effect, and is 
attended by no evil circumstance, every one ought to take for 
granted, that the study of history is the best school where he can 
learn how to conduct himself in all the situations of life." Regulus 
had seen at Rome many examples of magnanimity, of frugality, 
of the contempt of riches and of other virtues ; and these virtues 
he practised. But he had not learned, nor had opportunity of 
learning another lesson, which the examples recorded in history 
inculcate frequently, the lesson of moderation. An insatiable 
thirst of military fame, and unconfined ambition of extending their 
empire, an extravagant confidence in their own courage and force, 
an insolent contempt of their enemies, and impetuous over-bear- 
ing spirit with which they pursued all their enterprises, composed 
in his days the distinguishing character of a Roman. Whatever 
the senate and people resolved, to the members of that common- 
wealth appeared both practicable and just. Neither difficulties 
nor dangers could check them ; and their sages had not yet dis- 
covered that virtues in excess degenerate into vices. Notwith- 
standing the beautiful rant which Horace puts into his mouth, I 
make no doubt that Regulus learned at Carthage those lessons of 
moderation which he had not learned at Rome ; but he learned 
them by experience, and the fruits of this experience came too 
late and cost too dear; for they cost the total defeat of the 
Roman army, the prolongation of a calamitous war which might 
have been finished by a glorious peace, the loss of liberty to thou- 

12 That {experience^ is indeed plainer which arises through our own mis- 
fortunes, but that is safer which arises through those of others. — Polybius, 
translated by Casaubon, 



STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 391 

sands of Roman citizens, and to Regulus himself, the loss of life 
in the midst of torments, if we are to credit what is perhaps exag- 
geration in the Roman authors. 

There is another advantage, worthy our observation, that be- 
longs to the study of history ; and that I shall mention here, not 
only because of the importance of it, but because it leads me 
immediately to speak of the nature of the improvement we ought 
to have in our view, and of the method in which it seems to me 
that this improvement ought to be pursued : two particulars from 
which your lordship may think perhaps that I digress too long. 
The advantage I mean consists in this, that the examples which 
history presents to us, both of men and of events, are generally 
complete : the whole example is before us, and consequently the 
whole lesson, or sometimes the various lessons, which philosophy 
proposes to teach us by this example. For first, as to men ; we 
see them at their whole length in history, and we see them gen- 
erally there through a medium less partial at least than that of 
experience : for I imagine that a whig or a tory, whilst those par- 
ties subsisted, would have condemned in Saturninus the spirit of 
faction which he applauded in his own tribunes, and would have 
applauded in Drusus the spirit of moderation which he despised 
in those of the contrary party, and which he suspected and hated 
in those of his own party. The villain who has imposed on man- 
kind by his power or cunning, and whom experience could not 
unmask for a time, is unmasked at length : and the honest man, 
who has been misunderstood or defamed, is justified before his 
story ends. Or if this does not happen, if the villain dies with his 
mask on, in the midst of applause, and honor, and wealth, and 
power, and if the honest man dies under the same load of calumny 
and disgrace under which he lived, driven perhaps into exile, and 
exposed to want ; yet we see historical justice executed, the name 
of one branded with infamy, and that of the other celebrated with 
panegyric to succeeding ages. " Prcecipuum munus annalium 
reor, ne virtutes sileantur, ntque pravis dictis factisque ex poster- 



392 LORD BOLJNGBROKE. 

itate et infamia metus sit" n Thus, according to Tacitus, and 
according to truth, from which his judgments seldom deviate, the 
principal duty of history is to erect a tribunal, like that among the 
Egyptians, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, where men and princes 
themselves were tried, and condemned or acquitted, after their 
deaths ; where those who had not been punished for their crimes, 
and those who had not been honored for their virtues, received a 
just retribution. The sentence is pronounced in one case, as it 
was in the other, too late to correct or recompense ; but it is pro- 
nounced in time to render these examples of general instruction 
to mankind. Thus Cicero, that I may quote one instance out of 
thousands, and that I may do justice to the general character of 
that great man, whose particular failing I have censured so freely ; 
Cicero, I say, was abandoned by Octavius, and massacred by 
Antony. But let any man read this fragment of Arellius Fuscus, 
and choose which he would wish to have been, the orator, or the 
triumvir? "Quoad humanum genus incolume manserit, quamdiu 
usus Uteris, honor summce eloquentice pretium erit, quamdiu re- 
rum natura aut fortuna steierit, aut 7?iemoria duraverit, admira- 
bile posteris vigebis ingenium, et uno pi'oscriptus seculo, proscribes 
Antonium omnibus." 13 

Thus again, as to events that stand recorded in history, we see 
them all, we see them as they followed one another, or as they 
produced one another, causes or effects, immediate or remote. 
We are cast back, as it were, into former ages : we live with 
the men who lived before us, and we inhabit countries that we 
never saw. Place is enlarged, and time prolonged, in this man- 
ner ; so that the man who applies himself early to the study of 

M I esteem it the chief office of annals that virtues be not kept silent, and that 
men may fear wicked words and deeds by reason of posterity and ill report. — 
Tacitus, Annals, III. 65. 

14 As long as the human race shall exist, as long as literature shall prevail, 
as long as honor shall be the reward of the highest eloquence, as long as nature 
or fortune shall stand, or memory endure, you will be esteemed by posterity a 
wonderful intellect, and though proscribed in one age, you will proscribe An- 
tony in all. — Arellius Fuscus. 



STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 393 

history, may acquire in a few years, and before he sets his foot 
abroad in the world, not only a more extended knowledge of 
mankind, but the experience of more centuries than any of 
the patriarchs saw. The events we are witnesses of, in the 
course of the longest life, appear to us very often original, unpre- 
pared, single, and un-relative, if I may use such an expression for 
want of a better in English ; in French I would say isolcs : they 
appear such very often, are called accidents, and looked on as 
the effects of chance ; a word, by the way, which is in constant 
use, and has frequently no determinate meaning. We get over the 
present difficulty, we improve the momentary advantage, as well 
as we can, and we look no farther. Experience can carry us no 
farther • for experience can go a very little way back in discover- 
ing causes : and effects are not the objects of experience till they 
happen. From hence many errors in judgment, and by conse- 
quence in conduct, necessarily arise. And here too lies the 
difference we are speaking of between history and experience. 
The advantage on the side of the former is double. In ancient 
history, as we have said already, the examples are complete, which 
are incomplete in the course of experience. The beginning, the 
progression, and the end appear, not of particular reigns, much 
less of particular enterprizes, or systems of policy alone, but of 
governments, of nations, of empires, and of all the various systems 
that have succeeded one another in the course of their duration. 
In modern history, the examples may be, and sometimes are, 
incomplete ; but they have this advantage when they are so, 
that they serve to render complete the examples of our own time. 
Experience is doubly defective ; we are born too late to see the 
beginning, and we die too soon to see the end of many things. 
History supplies both these defects. Modern history shews the 
causes, when experience presents the effects alone : and ancient 
history enables us to guess at the effects, when experience presents 
the causes alone. Let me explain my meaning by two examples 
of these kinds ; one past, the other actually present. 

When the revolution of one thousand six hundred and eighty- 



394 LORD BOLINGBROKK. 

eight happened, few men then alive, I suppose, went farther in 
their search after the causes of it, than the extravagant attempt of 
king James against the religion and liberty of his people. His 
former conduct, and the passages of king Charles the second's 
reign might rankle still at the hearts of some men, but could not 
be set to account among the causes of his deposition ; since he 
had succeeded, notwithstanding them, peaceably to the throne : 
and the nation in general, even many of those who would have 
excluded him from it, were desirous, or at least, willing, that he 
should continue in it. Now this example, thus stated, affords, 
no doubt, much good instruction to the kings and people of 
Britain. But this instruction is not entire, because the example 
thus stated, and confined to the experience of that age, is im- 
perfect. King James's mal-administration rendered a revolution 
necessary and practicable : but his mal-administration, as well as 
all his preceding conduct, was caused by his bigot-attachment to 
popery, and to the principles of arbitrary government, from which 
no warning could divert him. His bigot-attachment to these was 
caused by the exile of the royal family, this exile was caused by 
the usurpation of Cromwell : and Cromwell's usurpation was the 
effect of a former rebellion, begun not without reason on account 
of liberty, but without any valid pretence on account of religion. 
During this exile, our princes caught the taint of popery and 
foreign politics. We made them unfit to govern us, and after that 
were forced to recal them that they might rescu'e us out of 
anarchy. It was necessary therefore, your lordship sees, at the 
revolution, and it is more so now, to go back in history, at least 
as far as I have mentioned, and perhaps farther, even to the 
beginning of king James the first's reign, to render this event a 
complete example, and to develop all the wise, honest and salutary 
precepts, with which it is pregnant, both to the king and subject. 

The other example shall be taken from what has succeeded the 
revolution. Few men at that time looked forward enough, to fore- 
see the necessary consequences of the new constitution of the 
revenue that was soon afterwards formed ; nor of the method of 



STUDY AND USE OF HISTORY. 395 

funding that immediately took place ; which, absurd as they are, 
have continued ever since, till it is become scarce possible to alter 
them. Few people, I say, foresaw how the creation of funds, and 
the multiplication of taxes, would increase yearly the power of 
the crown, and bring our liberties, by a natural and necessary 
progression, into more real, though less apparent danger, than 
they were in before the revolution. The excessive ill husbandry 
practised from the beginning of king William's reign, and which 
laid the foundations of all we feel and all we fear, was not the 
effect of ignorance, mistake, or what we call chance, but of design 
and scheme in those who had the sway at that time. I am not so 
uncharitable, however, as to believe that they intended to bring 
upon their country all the mischiefs that we, who came after them, 
experience, and apprehend. No, they saw the measures they 
took singly, and unrelatively, or relatively alone to some im- 
mediate object. The notion of attaching men to the new govern- 
ment, by tempting them to embark their fortunes on the same 
bottom, was a reason of state to some : the notion of creating a 
new, that is, a moneyed interest, in opposition to the landed inter- 
est, or as a balance to it, and of acquiring a superior influence in 
the city of London at least by the establishment of great cor- 
porations, was a reason of party to others : and I make no doubt 
that the opportunity of amassing immense estates by the manage- 
ment of funds, by trafficking in paper, and by all the arts of job- 
bing, was a reason of private interest to those who supported and 
improved this scheme of iniquity, if not to those who devised it. 
They looked no farther. Nay, we who came after them, and 
have long tasted the bitter fruits of the corruption they planted, 
were far from taking such an alarm at our distress, and our 
danger, as they deserved ; till the mc^t remote and fatal effect of 
causes, laid by the last generation, was very near becoming an 
object of experience in this. Your lordship, I am sure, sees at 
once how much a due reflection on the passages of former times, 
as they stand recorded in the history of our own, and of other 
countries, would have deterred a free people from trusting the 



396 LORD BOLINGBROKE. 

sole management of so great a revenue, and the sole nomination 
of those legions of officers employed in it, to their chief magis- 
trate. There remained indeed no pretence for doing so, when 
once a salary was settled on the prince, and the public revenue 
was no longer in any sense his revenue, nor the public expence 
his expence. Give me leave to add, that it would have been, and 
would be still, more decent with regard to the prince, and less 
repugnant if not more conformable to the principle and practice 
too of our government, to take this power and influence from the 
prince, or to share it with him ; than to exclude men from the 
privilege of representing their fellow-subjects who would chuse 
them in parliament, purely because they are employed and trusted 
by the prince. 

Your lordship sees not only how much a due reflection upon the 
experience of other ages and countries would have pointed out 
national corruption, as the natural and necessary consequence of 
investing the crown with the management of so great a revenue ; 
but also the loss of liberty, as the natural and necessary conse- 
quence of national corruption. 

These two examples explain sufficiently what they are intended 
to explain. It only remains therefore upon this head, to observe 
the difference between two manners in which history supplies the 
defects of our own experience. It shows us causes as in fact they 
were laid, with their immediate effects : and it enables us to guess 
at future events. It can do no more, in the nature of things. 
My lord Bacon, in his second book of the Advancement of Learn- 
ing, having in his mind, I suppose, what Philo and Josephus 
asserted of Moses, affirms divine history to have this prerogative, 
that the narration may be before the fact as well as after. But 
since the ages of prophecy, as well as miracles, are past, we must 
content ourselves to guess at what will be by what has been : we 
have no other means in our power, and history furnishes us with 
these. How we are to improve, and apply these means as well as 
how we are to acquire them, shall be deduced more particularly 
in another letter. 



XIX. 

DAVID HUME. 

(1711-1776.) 

ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY. 

[Published in 1742.] 

Essay XIII. — Of Eloquence. 

Those who consider the periods and revolutions of human kind, 
as represented in history, are entertained with a spectacle full of 
pleasure and variety, and see, with surprise, the manners, customs, 
and opinions of the same species susceptible of such prodigious 
changes in different periods of time. It may, however, be ob- 
served, that in civil history there is found a much greater uniform- 
ity than in the history of learning and science, and that the wars, 
negotiations, and politics of one age, resemble more those of 
another, than the taste, wit, and speculative principles. Interest 
and ambition, honour and shame, friendship and enmity, gratitude 
and revenge, are the prime movers in all public transactions ; and 
these passions are of a very stubborn and intractable nature, in 
comparison of the sentiments and understanding, which are easily 
varied by education and example. The Goths were much more 
inferior to the Romans in taste and science than in courage and 
virtue. 

But not to compare together nations so widely different ; it may 
be observed, that even this later period of human learning is, in 
many respects, of an opposite character to the ancient ; and that, 
if we be superior in philosophy, we are still, notwithstanding all our 
refinements, much inferior in eloquence. 

397 



398 DAVID HUMfl. 

In ancient times, no work of genius was thought to require so 
great parts and capacity as the speaking in public ; and some 
eminent writers have pronounced the talents, even of a great poet 
or philosopher, to be of an inferior nature to those which are 
requisite for such an undertaking. Greece and Rome produced, 
each of them, but one accomplished orator ; and whatever praises 
the other celebrated speakers might merit, they were still esteemed 
much inferior to these great models of eloquence. It is observable 
that the ancient critics could scarcely find two orators in any age, 
who deserved to be placed precisely in the same rank, and pro- 
fessed the same degree of merit. Calvus, Coelius, Curio, Hor- 
tensius, Caesar, rose one above another ; but the greatest of that 
age was inferior to Cicero, the most eloquent speaker that had 
ever appeared in Rome. Those of fine taste, however, pro- 
nounced this judgment of the Roman orator, as well as of the 
Grecian, that both of them surpassed in eloquence all that had 
ever appeared, but that they were far from reaching the perfec- 
tion of their art, which was infinite, and not only exceeded human 
force to attain, but human imagination to conceive. Cicero de- 
clares himself dissatisfied with his own performances ; nay, even 
with those of Demosthenes ; Ita sunt avidie et capaces [niece 
aures~\, says he, et semper illiquid inimensum, infinitumque desid- 
erant} 

Of all the polite and learned nations, England alone professes a 
popular government, or admits into the legislature such numerous 
assemblies as can be supposed to lie under the dominion of elo- 
quence. But what has England to boast of in this particular ? In 
enumerating the great men who have done honour to our country, 
we exult in our poets and philosophers ; but what orators are ever 
mentioned ? Or where are the monuments of their genius to be 
met with? there are found, indeed, in our histories, the names of 
several, who directed the resolutions of our parliament : But 
neither themselves nor others have taken the pains to preserve the 

1 My ears are so greedy and capacious, and always long for something im- 
mense and infinite. — Cicer<», Orator, 29 (104). 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY. 39»J 

speeches ; and the authority, which they professed, seems to have 
been owing to their experience, wisdom, or power, more than to 
their talents for oratory. At present there are above half a dozen 
speakers in the two houses, who, in the judgment of the public, 
have reached very near the same pitch of eloquence ; and no 
man pretends to give any one the preference above the rest. 
This seems to me a certain proof that none of them have attained 
much beyond a mediocrity in their art, and that the species of 
eloquence, which they aspire to, gives no exercise to the sublimer 
faculties of the mind, but may be reached by ordinary talents and 
a slight application. A hundred cabinet-makers in London can 
work a table or a chair equally well ; but no one poet can write 
verses with such spirit and elegance as Mr. Pope. 

We are told that, when Demosthenes was to plead, all ingenious 
men flocked to Athens from the most remote parts of Greece, as 
to the most celebrated spectacle of the world. 2 At London you 
may see men sauntering in the court of requests, while the most 
important debate is carrying on in the two houses ; and many do 
not think themselves sufficiently compensated for the losing of 
their dinners by all the eloquence of our most celebrated speakers. 
When old Gibber is to act, the curiosity of several is more excited 
than when our prime minister is to defend himself from a motion 
for his removal or impeachment. 

Even a person unacquainted with the noble remains of ancient 
orators, may judge from a few strokes that the style or species of 
their eloquence was infinitely more sublime than that which mod- 
ern orators aspire to. How absurd would it appear, in our tem- 
perate and calm speakers, to make use of an Apostrophe, like 
that noble one of Demosthenes, so much celebrated by Quintilian 
and Longinus, when justifying the unsuccessful battle of Chaeronea, 
he breaks out, " No, my Fellow Citizens, No : You have not erred. 
I swear by the names of those heroes, who fought for the same 
cause in the plains of Marathon and Plataea ! " Who could now 
endure such a bold and poetical figure as that which Cicero em- 

2 ClCERO, De Claris Oratoribus, 84 (289). 



400 DAVID HUME. 

ploys, after describing in the most tragical terms the crucifixion of 
a Roman citizen : " Should I paint the horrors of this scene, not 
to Roman citizens, not to the allies of our state, not to those who 
have ever heard of the Roman Name, not even to men, but to 
brute creatures ; or, to go farther, should I lift up my voice in the 
most desolate solitude, to the rocks and mountains, yet should I 
surely see those rude and inanimate parts of nature moved with 
horror and indignation at the recital of so enormous an action?" 3 
With what a blaze of eloquence must such a sentence be sur- 
rounded to give it grace, or cause it to make any impression on 
the hearers ? And what noble art and sublime talents are requisite 
to arrive, by just degrees, at a sentiment so bold and excessive : 
to inflame the audience, so as to make them accompany the 
speaker in such violent passions, and such elevated conceptions ; 
and to conceal, under a torrent of eloquence, the artifice by 
which all this is effectuated ! Should this sentiment even appear 
to us excessive, as perhaps it justly may, it will at least serve to give 
an idea of the stile of ancient eloquence, where such swelling ex- 
pressions were not rejected as wholly monstrous and gigantic. 

Suitable to this vehemence of thought and expression, was the 
vehemence of action, observed in the ancient orators. The sup- 
plosio pedis, or stamping with the foot, was one of the most usual 
and moderate gestures which they made use of; 4 though that is 
now esteemed too violent, either for the senate, bar, or pulpit, 
and is only admitted into the theatre to accompany the most vio- 
lent passions, which are there represented. 

One is somewhat at a loss to what cause we may ascribe so 
sensible a decline of eloquence in later ages. The genius of man- 
kind at all times, is, perhaps, equal. The moderns have applied 
themselves, with great industry and success, to all the other arts 
and sciences : and a learned nation possesses a popular govern- 
ment ; a circumstance which seems requisite for the full display of 
these noble talents : but notwithstanding all these advantages, our 

3 Cicero, Against Verres. 

4 Cicero, De Clans Oratoribus, 38 (141). 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY. 401 

progress in eloquence is very inconsiderable, in comparison of the 
advances which we have made in all other parts of learning. 

Shall we assert that the strains of ancient eloquence are unsuit- 
able to our age, and ought not to be imitated by modern orators ? 
Whatever reasons may be made use of to prove this, I am per- 
suaded they will be found, upon examination, to be unsound and 
unsatisfactory. 

First, it may be said, that, in ancient times, during the flourish- 
ing period of Greek and Roman learning, the municipal laws, in 
every state, were but few and simple, and the decision of causes 
was, in a great measure, left to the equity and common sense of 
the judges. The study of the laws was not then a laborious occu- 
pation, requiring the drudgery of a whole life to finish it, and 
incompatible with every other study or profession. The great 
statesmen and generals among the Romans were all lawyers, and 
Cicero, to shew the facility of acquiring this science, declares that 
in the midst of all his occupations, he would undertake, in a few 
days, to make himself a complete civilian. Now, where a pleader 
addresses himself to the equity of his judges, he has much more 
room to display his eloquence than where he must draw his argu- 
ments from strict laws, statutes, and precedents. In the former 
case many circumstances must be taken in ; many personal consid- 
erations regarded ; and even favour and inclination, which it belongs 
to the orator by his art and eloquence to conciliate, may be 
disguised under the appearance of equity. But how shall a 
modern lawyer have leisure to quit his toilsome occupations, in 
order to gather the flowers of Parnassus ? Or what opportunity 
shall he have of displaying them amidst the rigid and subtle argu- 
ments, objections and replies, which he is obliged to make use of? 
The greatest genius, and greatest orator, who should pretend to 
plead before the Chancellor, after a month's study of the laws, 
would only labour to make himself ridiculous. 

I am ready to own that this circumstance, of the multiplicity 
and intricacy of laws, is a discouragement to eloquence in modern 
times. But I assert that it will not entirely account for the decline 



402 DAVID HUME. 

of that noble art. It may banish oratory from Westminster- Hall, 
but not from either house of parliament. Among the Athenians, 
the Areopagites expressly forbade all allurements of eloquence ; 
and some have pretended that in the Greek orations, written in 
the judiciary form, there is not so bold and rhetorical a style as 
appears in the Roman. But to what a pitch did the Athenians 
carry their eloquence in the deliberative kind, when affairs of state 
were canvassed, and the liberty, happiness, and honour of the 
republic were the subject of debate ? Disputes of this nature ele- 
vate the genius above all others, and give the fullest scope to 
eloquence ; and such disputes are very frequent in this nation. 

Secondly, it may be pretended that the decline of eloquence is 
owing to the superior good sense of the moderns, who reject with 
disdain all those rhetorical tricks employed to seduce the judges, 
and will admit of nothing but solid argument in any debate of 
deliberation. If a man be accused of murder, the fact must be 
proved by witnesses and evidence ; and the laws will afterwards 
determine the punishment of the criminal. It would be ridicu- 
lous to describe, in strong colours, the horror and cruelty of the 
action : to introduce the relations of the dead ; and at a signal, 
make them throw themselves at the feet of the judges, imploring 
justice with tears and lamentations : and still more ridiculous 
would it be, to employ a picture representing the bloody deed, in 
order to move the judges by the display of so tragical a spectacle, 
though we know that this artifice was sometimes practised by the 
pleaders of old. 5 Now, banish the pathetic from public discourses, 
and you reduce the speakers merely to modern eloquence ; that is, 
to good sense delivered in proper expression. 

Perhaps it may be acknowledged that our modern customs, or 
our superior good sense, if you will, should make our orators more 
cautious and reserved than the ancient, in attempting to inflame 
the passions, or elevate the imagination of their audience : but I 
see no reason why it should make them despair absolutely of 
succeeding in that attempt. It should make them redouble their 

5 Quinttliax, Book VI., Chap. I. 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY. 403 

art, not abandon it entirely. The ancient orators seem also to 
have been on their guard against this jealousy of their audience ; 
but they took a different way of eluding it. 6 They hurried away 
with such a torrent of sublime and pathetic that they left their 
hearers no leisure to perceive the artifice, by which they were 
deceived. Nay, to consider the matter aright, they were not 
deceived by any artifice. The orator, by the force of his own 
genius and eloquence, first inflamed himself with anger, indigna- 
tion, pity, sorrow, and then communicated those impetuous move- 
ments to his audience. 

Does any man pretend to have more good sense than Julius 
Caesar ? yet that haughty conqueror, we know, was so subdued by 
the charms of Cicero's eloquence that he was, in a manner, con- 
strained to change his settled purpose and resolution, and to 
absolve a criminal, whom, before that orator pleaded, he was de- 
termined to condemn. 

Some objections, I own, notwithstanding his vast success, may 
lie against some passages of the Roman orator. He is too florid 
and rhetorical : His figures are too striking and palpable : the 
divisions of his discourse are drawn chiefly from the rules of the 
schools : and his wit disdains not always the artifice even of a 
pun, rhyme, or jingle of words. The Grecian addressed himself 
to an audience much less refined than the Roman senate or 
judges. The lowest vulgar of Athens were his sovereigns and the 
arbiters of his eloquence. 7 Yet is his manner more chaste and 
austere than that of the other. Could it be copied, its success 
would be infallible over a modern assembly. It is rapid harmony, 
exactly adjusted to the sense : it is vehement reasoning, without 
any appearance of art : it is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, 
involved in a continued stream of argument : and of all human pro- 
ductions, the orations of Demosthenes present to us the models 
which approach the nearest to perfection. 

6 Longinus, Chap. XV. 

7 " The orators formed the taste of the Athenian people, not the people of 
the orators." — From Hume's note. 



404 DAVID HUME. 

Thirdly, it may be pretended that the disorders of the ancient 
governments, and the enormous crimes of which the citizens were 
often guilty, afforded much ampler matter for eloquence than can 
be met with among the moderns. Were there no Verres or Cati- 
line, there would be no Cicero. But that this reason can have no 
great influence, is evident. It would be easy to find a Philip in 
modern times; but where shall we find a Demosthenes? 

"What remains, then, but that we lay the blame on the want of 
genius, or of judgment in our speakers, who either found them- 
selves incapable of reaching the heights of ancient eloquence, or 
rejected all such endeavours as unsuitable to the spirit of modern 
assemblies ? A few successful attempts of this nature might rouze 
the genius of the nation, excite the emulation of the youth, and 
accustom our ears to a more sublime and more pathetic elocution 
than what we have been hitherto entertained with. There is cer- 
tainly something accidental in the first rise and the progress of 
the arts in any nation. I doubt whether a very satisfactory reason 
can be given why ancient Rome, though it received all its refine- 
ments from Greece, could attain only to a relish for statuary, 
painting, and architecture, without reaching the practice of these 
arts : while modern Rome has been excited by a few remains 
found among the ruins of antiquity, and has produced artists of 
the greatest eminence and distinction. Had such a cultivated 
genius for oratory, as Waller's for poetry, arisen, during the civil 
wars, when liberty began to be fully established, and popular 
assemblies to enter into all the most material points of govern- 
ments ; I am persuaded so illustrious an example would have 
given a quite different turn to British eloquence, and made us 
reach the perfection of the ancient model. Our orators would 
then have done honour to their country, as well as our poets, 
geometers, and philosophers, and British Ciceros have appeared, 
as well as British Archimedeses and Virgils. 

It is seldom or never found, when a false taste in poetry or 
eloquence prevails among any people, that it has been preferred 
to a true, upon comparison and reflection. It commonly prevails 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY. 405 

merely from ignorance of the true, and from the want of perfect 
models, to lead men into a juster apprehension, and more refined 
relish of those productions of genius. When these appear, they 
soon unite all suffrages in their favour, and, by their natural and 
powerful charms, gain over even the most prejudiced, to the love 
and admiration of them. The principles of every passion, and of 
every sentiment, is [sic\ in every man ; and when touched prop- 
erly, they rise to life, and warm the heart, and convey that satis- 
faction, by which a work of genius is distinguished from the 
adulterate beauties of a capricious wit and fancy. And if this 
observation be true with regard to all the liberal arts, it must be 
peculiarly so with regard to eloquence ; which, being merely cal- 
culated for the public, and for men of the world, cannot, with any 
pretence of reason, appeal from the people to more refined 
judges ; but must submit to the public verdict, without reserve 
or limitation. Whoever, upon comparison, is deemed by a com- 
mon audience the greatest orator, ought most certainly to be pro- 
nounced such by men of science and erudition. And though an 
indifferent speaker may triumph for a long time, and be esteemed 
altogether perfect by the vulgar, who are satisfied with his accom- 
plishments, and know not in what he is defective ; yet, whenever 
the true genius arises, he draws to him the attention of every one, 
and immediately appears superior to his rival. 

Now to judge by this rule, ancient eloquence, that is, the sublime 
and passionate, is of a much juster taste than the modern, or the 
argumentative and rational ; and, if properly executed, will always 
have more command and authority over mankind. We are satis- 
fied with our mediocrity, because we have had no experience of 
anything better; but the ancients had experience of both, and 
upon comparison, gave the preference to that kind of which they 
have left us such applauded models. For, if I mistake not, our 
modern eloquence is of the same style or species with that which 
ancient critics denominated Attic eloquence, that is, calm, elegant, 
and sublime, which instructed the reason more than affected the 
passions, and never raised its tone above argument or common 



406 DAVID HUME. 

discourse. Such was the eloquence of Lysias among the Athen- 
ians, and of Calvus among the Romans. These were esteemed 
in their time ; but when compared with Demosthenes and Cicero, 
were eclipsed like a taper when set in the rays of a meridian sun. 
Those latter orators possessed the same elegance, and sublimity, 
and force of argument, with the former ; but what rendered them 
chiefly admirable, was that pathetic and sublime, which, on proper 
occasions, they threw into their discourse, and by which they 
commanded the resolution of their audience. 

Of this species of eloquence we have scarcely had any instance 
in England, at least in our public speakers. In our writers, we 
have had some instances, which have met with great applause, 
and might assure our ambitious youth of equal or superior glory 
in attempts for the revival of ancient eloquence. Lord Boling- 
broke's productions, with all their defects in argument, method, 
and precision, contain a force and energy, which our orators 
scarcely ever aim at ; though it is evident that such an elevated 
style has much better grace in a speaker than in a writer, and is 
assured of more prompt and more astonishing success. It is 
there seconded by the graces of voice and action : the movements 
are mutually communicated between the orator and the audience : 
and the very aspect of a large assembly, attentive to the discourse 
of one man, must inspire him with a peculiar elevation, sufficient 
to give a propriety to the strongest figures and expressions. It is 
true, there is a great prejudice against set speeches ; and a man 
cannot escape ridicule who repeats a discourse as a school-boy 
does his lesson, and takes no notice of anything that has been 
advanced in the course of the debate. But where is the necessity 
of falling into this absurdity? A public speaker must know be- 
forehand the question under debate. He may compose all the 
arguments, objections, and answers, such as he thinks will be most 
proper for his discourse. 8 If anything now occurs, he may supply 

8 "The first of the Athenians, who composed and wrote his speeches was 
Pericles, a man of business and a man of sense, if ever there was one. irpwros 
ypairrhv \6yov iv StKaaTTtipicp clwe, twv irph avrov ax ( ^ ia C^ VTaiP ' [He ^ rs ^ spoke 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LLTERARY. 407 

it from his invention ; nor will the difference be very apparent 
between his elaborate and his extemporary compositions. The 
mind naturally continues with the same impetus or force which 
it has acquired by its motion ; as a vessel, once impelled by the 
oars, carries on its course for some time, when the original im- 
pulse is suspended. 

I shall conclude this subject with observing, that, even though 
our modern orators should not elevate their style, or aspire to a 
rivalship with the ancient ; yet is there, in most of their speeches, 
a material defect, which they might correct without departing 
from that composed air of argument and reasoning to which they 
limit their ambition. Their great affectation of extemporary dis- 
courses has made them reject all order and method, which seems 
so requisite to argument, and without which it is scarcely possible 
to produce an entire conviction on the mind. It is not that one 
would recommend many divisions in a public discourse, unless the 
subject very evidently offer them : but it is easy, without this 
formality, to observe a method, and make that method conspic- 
uous to the hearers, who will be infinitely pleased to see the argu- 
ments rise naturally from one another, and will retain a more 
thorough persuasion than can arise from the strongest reasons 
which are thrown together in confusion. 



Essay XXII. — Of Tragedy. 

It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a 
well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and 
other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. 
The more they are touched and affected, the more are they de- 
lighted with the spectacle j and as soon as the uneasy passions 
cease to operate, the piece is at an end. One scene of full joy 
and contentment and security, is the utmost that any composi- 
tion of this kind can bear j and it is sure always to be the conclud- 

a written speech in court, as his predecessors spoke extempore.] Suidas on 
Pericles." — ■ Hume's note. 



408 DAVID HUME. 

ing one. If, in the texture of the piece, there be interwoven any 
scenes of satisfaction, they afford only faint gleams of pleasure, 
which are thrown in by way of variety, and in order to plunge the 
actors into deeper distress by means of that contract and disap- 
pointment. The whole art of the poet is employed in rouzing and 
supporting the compassion and indignation, the anxiety and re- 
sentment of his audience. They are pleased in proportion as 
they are afflicted, and never are so happy as when they employ 
tears, sobs, and cries, to give vent to their sorrow and relieve 
their heart, swoln with the tenderest sympathy and compassion. 

The few critics who have had some tincture of philosophy, 
have remarked this singular phenomenon, and have endeavoured 
to account for it. 

L'Abbe Dubos, in his reflections on poetry and painting, asserts 
that nothing is in general so disagreeable to the mind as the 
languid, listless state of indolence, into which it falls upon the 
removal of all passion and occupation. To get rid of this painful 
situation, it seeks every amusement and pursuit ; business, gam- 
ing, shews, executions ; whatever will rouze the passions, and take 
its attention from itself. No matter what the passion is : let it be 
disagreeable, afflicting, melancholy, disordered, it is still better 
than that insipid languor which arises from perfect tranquillity and 
repose. 

It is impossible not to admit this account, as being, at least in 
part, satisfactory. You may observe, when there are several 
tables of gaming, that all the company run to those where the 
deepest play is, even though they find not there the best players. 
The view, or, at least, imagination of high passions, arising from 
great loss or gain, affects the spectator by sympathy, gives him 
some touches of the same passions, and serves him for a momen- 
tary entertainment. . It makes the time pass the easier with him, 
and is some relief to that oppression, under which men commonly 
labour, when left entirely to their own thoughts and meditations. 

We find that common liars always magnify, in their narrations, 
all kinds of danger, pain, distress, sickness, deaths, murders, and 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LLTERARY. 409 

cruelties ; as well as joy, beauty, mirth, and magnificence. It is 
an absurd secret which they have for pleasing their company, fix- 
ing their attention, and attaching them to such marvellous relations 
by the passions and emotions which they excite. 

There is, however, a difficulty in applying to the present subject, 
in its full extent, this solution, however ingenious and satisfactory 
it may appear. It is certain that the same object of distress, 
which pleases in a tragedy, were it really set before us, would give 
the most unfeigned uneasiness, though it be then the most effec- 
tual cure to languor and indolence. Monsieur Fontenelle seems 
to have been sensible of this difficulty ; and accordingly attempts 
another solution of the phenomenon ; at least makes some addi- 
tion to the theory above mentioned. 9 

" Pleasure and pain," says he, " which are two sentiments so 
" different in themselves, differ not so much in their cause. From 
"the instance of tickling, it appears that the movement of pleas- 
" ure, pushed a little too far, becomes pain ; and that the move- 
" ment of pain, a little moderated, becomes pleasure. Hence it 
" proceeds that there is such a thing as a sorrow, soft and agree- 
able: it is a pain weakened and diminished. The heart likes 
"naturally to be moved and affected. Melancholy objects suit 
"it, and even disastrous and sorrowful, provided that they are 
" softened by some circumstance. It is certain that on the 
" theatre, the representation has almost the effect of reality ; yet 
" it has not altogether that effect. However we may be hurried 
" away by the spectacle ; whatever dominion the senses and im- 
" agination may usurp over the reason, there still lurks at the 
"bottom a certain idea of falsehood in the whole of what we see. 
" This idea, though weak and disguised, suffices to diminish the 
" pain which we suffer from the misfortunes of those whom we 
" love, and to reduce that affliction to such a pitch as converts 
" it into a pleasure. We weep for the misfortune of a hero, to 
" whom we are attached. In the same instant we comfort our- 
" selves by reflecting that it is nothing but a fiction : and it is 
9 Re/lections sur la poctique, § 36. 



410 DAVID HUME. 

" precisely that mixture of sentiments, which composes an agree- 
" able sorrow, and tears that delight us. But as that affliction, 
"which is caused by exterior and sensible objects, is stronger than 
" the consolation which arises from an internal reflection, they 
" are the effects and symptoms of sorrow that ought to predomi- 
nate in the composition." 

This solution seems just and convincing ; but perhaps it wants 
still some new addition, in order to make it answer fully the phe- 
nomenon, which we here examine. All the passions, excited by 
eloquence, are agreeable in the highest degree, as well as those 
which are moved by painting and the theatre. The epilogues 
of Cicero are, on this account chiefly, the delight of every reader 
of taste ; it is difficult to read some of them without the deepest 
sympathy and sorrow. His merit as an orator, no doubt, depends 
much on his success in this particular. When he had raised tears 
in his judges and all his audience, they were then the most highly 
delighted, and expressed the greatest satisfaction with the pleader. 
The pathetic description of the butchery made by Verres of the 
Sicilian captains, is a masterpiece of this kind : but I believe more 
will affirm that the being present at a melancholy scene of that 
nature would afford any entertainment. Neither is the sorrow 
here softened by fiction : for the audience were convinced of the 
reality of every circumstance. What is it then, which in this case 
raises a pleasure from the bosom of uneasiness, so to speak ; and 
a pleasure, which still retains all the features and outward symp- 
toms of distress and sorrow ? 

I answer : this extraordinary effect proceeds from that very elo- 
quence, with which the melancholy scene is represented. The 
genius required to paint objects in a lively manner, the art em- 
ployed in collecting all the pathetic circumstances, the judgment 
displayed in disposing them : the exercise, I say, of these noble 
talents, together with the force of expression, and beauty of ora- 
torial numbers, diffuse the highest satisfaction on the audience, 
and excite the most delightful movements. By this means, the 
uneasiness of the melancholy passions is not only overpowered 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY. 411 

and effaced by something stronger of an opposite kind ; but the 
whole impulse of those passions is converted into pleasure, and 
swells the delight which the eloquence raises in us. The same 
force of oratory, employed on an uninteresting subject, would not 
please half so much, or rather would appear altogether ridiculous, 
and the mind, being left in absolute calmness and indifference, 
would relish none of those beauties of imagination or expression 
which, if joined to passion, give it such exquisite entertainment. 
The impulse or vehemence, arising from sorrow, compassion, in- 
dignation, receives a new direction from the sentiments of beauty. 
The latter, being the predominant emotion, seize the whole mind, 
and convert the former into themselves, at least tincture them so 
strongly as totally to alter their nature. And the soul, being, at 
the same time, rouzed by passion, and charmed by eloquence, 
feels on the whole a strong movement, which is altogether 
delightful. 

The same principle takes place in tragedy ; with this addition, 
that tragedy is an imitation ; and imitation is always of itself 
agreeable. This circumstance serves still farther to smooth the 
motions of passion, and convert the whole feeling into one uniform 
and strong enjoyment. Objects of the greatest terror and distress 
please in painting, and please more than the most beautiful ob- 
jects, that appear calm and indifferent. The affection, rouzing 
the mind, excites a large flock of spirit and vehemence ; which is 
all transformed into pleasure by the force of the prevailing move- 
ment. It is thus the fiction of tragedy softens the passion by an 
infusion of a new feeling, not merely by weakening or diminishing 
the sorrow. You may by degrees weaken a real sorrow till it 
totally disappears ; yet in none of its gradations will it ever give 
pleasure ; except, perhaps, by accident, to a man sunk under le- 
thargic indolence, whom it rouzes from that languid state. 

To confirm this theory, it will be sufficient to produce other 
instances, where the subordinate movement is converted into the 
predominant, and gives force to it, though of a different, and even 
sometimes though of a contrary nature. 



412 DAVID HUME. 

Novelty naturally rouzes the mind and attracts our attention ; 
and the movements, which it causes, are always converted into 
any passion belonging to the object, and join their force to it. 
Whether an event excite joy or sorrow, pride or shame, anger or 
good-will, it is sure to produce a stronger affection, when new or 
musical. And though novelty of itself be agreeable, it fortifies the 
painful, as well as agreeable passions. 

Had you any intention to move a person extremely by the nar- 
ration of any event, the best method of increasing its effect would 
be artfully to delay informing him of it, and first to excite his 
curiosity and impatience before you let him into the secret. This 
is the artifice practised by Iago in the famous scene of Shakes- 
peare ; and every spectator is sensible that Othello's jealousy 
acquires additional force from his preceding impatience, and that 
the subordinate passion is here readily transformed into the pre- 
dominant one. 

Difficulties increase passions of every kind, and by rouzing our 
attention, and exciting our active powers, they produce an emo- 
tion, which nourishes the prevailing affection. 

Parents commonly love that child most, whose sickly, infirm 
frame of body has occasioned them the greatest pains, trouble, 
and anxiety in rearing him. The agreeable sentiment of affection 
here acquires force from sentiments of uneasiness. 

Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. 
The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence. 

Jealousy is a painful passion : yet without some share of it, the 
agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force 
and violence. Absence is also a great source of complaint among 
lovers and gives them the greatest uneasiness : yet nothing is 
more favourable to their mutual passion than short intervals of that 
kind ; and if long intervals often prove fatal, it is only because, 
through time, men are accustomed to them, and they cease to 
give uneasiness. Jealousy and absence in love compose the dolce 
peccante of the Italians, which they suppose so essential to all 
pleasure. 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LITERARY. 413 

There is a fine observation of the elder Pliny, which illustrates 
the principle here insisted on. " It is very remarkable," says he, 
" that the last works of celebrated artists which they left imperfect, 
are always the most prized, such as the Iris of Aristides, the 
Tyndarides of Nicomachus, the Medea of Timomachus, and the 
Venus of Apelles. These are valued even above their finished 
productions : the broken lineaments of the piece, and the half- 
formed idea of the painter are carefully studied, and our very 
grief for that curious hand, which had been stopped by death, is 
an additional increase to our pleasure." 10 

These instances (and many more might be collected) are suffi- 
cient to afford us some insight into the analogy of nature and to 
show us that the pleasure, which poets, orators, and musicians 
give us, by exciting grief, sorrow, indignation, compassion, is not 
so extraordinary or paradoxical, as it may at first sight appear. 
The force of imagination, the energy of expression, the power of 
numbers, the charms of imitation ; all these are naturally of them- 
selves delightful to the mind : and when the object presented lays 
also hold of some affection, the pleasure still rises upon us by the 
conversion of their subordinate movement into that which is pre- 
dominant. The passion, though, perhaps, naturally, and when 
excited by the simple appearance of a real object, it may be pain- 
ful j yet is so smoothed and softened, and mollified, when raised 
by the finer arts, that it affords the highest entertainment. 

To confirm this reasoning, we may observe, that if the move- 
ments of the imagination be not predominant above those of the 
passion, a contrary effect follows; and the former, being now 
subordinate, is converted into the latter, and still farther increases 
the pain and affliction of the sufferer. . 

Who could ever think of it as a good expedient for comforting 
an afflicted parent, to exaggerate, with all the force of elocution, 
the irreparable loss which he has met with by the death of a 
favourite child ? The more power of imagination and expression 
you here employ, the more you increase his despair and affliction. 
i° Puny, Book XXXV., Chap. II. 



414 DAVID HUME. 

The shame, confusion, and terror of Verres, no doubt, rose in 
proportion to the noble eloquence and vehemence of Cicero : so 
also did his pain and uneasiness. These former passions were 
too strong for the pleasure arising from the beauties of elocution ; 
and operated, though from the same principle, yet in a contrary 
manner, to the sympathy, compassion, and indignation of the 
audience. 

Lord Clarendon, when he approaches towards the catastrophe 
of the royal party, supposes that his narration must then become 
infinitely disagreeable ; and he hurries over the king's death with- 
out giving us one circumstance of it. He considers it as too horrid 
a scene to be contemplated with any satisfaction, or even without 
the utmost pain and aversion. He himself, as well as the readers 
of that age, were too deeply concerned in the events, and felt a 
pain from subjects, which an historian and a reader of another 
age would regard as the most pathetic and most interesting, and, 
by consequence, the most agreeable. 

An action, represented in tragedy, may be too bloody and 
atrocious. It may excite such movements of horror as will not 
soften into pleasure ; and the greatest energy of expression, be- 
stowed on descriptions of that nature, serves only to augment 
our uneasiness. Such is that action represented in the Ambitious 
Step-mother, where a venerable old man, raised to the height of 
fury and despair, rushes against a pillar, and striking his head 
upon it, besmears it all over with mingled brains and gore. The 
English theatre abounds too much with such shocking images. 

Even the common sentiments of compassion require to be 
softened by some agreeable affection, in order to give a thorough 
satisfaction to the audience.. The mere suffering of plaintive vir- 
tue, under the triumphant tyranny and oppression of vice, forms 
a disagreeable spectacle, and is carefully avoided by all masters of 
the drama. In order to dismiss the audience with entire satisfac- 
tion and contentment, the virtue must either convert itself into a 
noble courageous despair, or the vice receive its proper punish- 
ment. 



ESSAYS, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND LLTERARY. 415 

Most painters appear in this light to have been very unhappy in 
their subjects. As they wrought much for churches and convents, 
they have chiefly represented such horrible subjects as crucifix- 
ions and martyrdoms, where nothing appears but tortures, wounds, 
executions, and passive suffering, without any action or affection. 
When they turned their pencil from this ghastly mythology, they 
had commonly recourse to Ovid, whose fictions, though passion- 
ate and agreeable, are scarcely natural or probable enough for 
painting. 

The same inversion of that principle, which is here insisted on, 
displays itself in common life, as in the effects of oratory and 
poetry. Raise so the subordinate passion that it becomes pre- 
dominant, it swallows up that affection which it before nourished 
and increased. Too much jealousy extinguishes love ; too much 
difficulty renders us indifferent ; too much sickness and infirmity 
disgusts a selfish and unkind parent. 

What so disagreeable as the dismal, gloomy, disastrous stories, 
with which melancholy people entertain their companions ? The 
uneasy passion being there raised alone, unaccompanied with any 
spirit, genius, or eloquence, conveys a pure uneasiness, and is 
attended with nothing that can soften it into pleasure or satis- 
faction. 



XX. 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

(1728-1774.) 

ESSAYS. 

[Published in 1765.] 

Essay XXI. — On the Use of Metaphors. 

Of all the implements of poetry, the Metaphor is the most 
generally and successfully used, and indeed may be termed the 
Muse's mduceus} by the power of which she enchants all nature. 
The metaphor is a shorter simile, or rather a kind of magical 
coat, by which the same idea assumes a thousand different 
appearances. Thus the word plough, which originally belongs to 
agriculture, being metaphorically used, represents the motion of a 
ship at sea, and the effects of old age upon the human counte- 
nance — 

"... Plough'd the bosom of the deep — " 
" And time had plough'd his venerable front." 

Almost every verb, noun substantive, or term of art in any lan- 
guage, may be in this manner applied to a variety of subjects with 
admirable effect ; but the danger is in sowing metaphors too thick, 
so as to distract the imagination of the reader, and incur the 
imputation of deserting nature, in order to hunt after conceits. 
Every day produces poems of all kinds so inflated with meta- 
phor, that they may be compared to the gaudy bubbles blown 
up from a solution of soap. Longinus is of opinion, that a multi- 
tude of metaphors is never excusable, except in those cases when 
the passions are roused, and like a winter torrent rush down im- 

1 The rod of Hermes (Mercury), the herald of the gods, which possessed 
magic powers. 
416 



ESS A VS. 417 

petuous, sweeping them with collective force along. He brings an 
instance of the following quotation from Demosthenes : " Men," 
says he, " profligates, miscreants, and flatterers, who having sever- 
ally preyed upon the bowels of their country, at length betrayed 
her liberty, first to Philip, and now again to Alexander; who, 
placing the chief felicity of life in the indulgence of infamous lusts 
and appetites, overturned in the dust that freedom and indepen- 
dence which was the chief aim and end of all our worthy ancestors." 

Aristotle and Theophrastus seem to think it is rather too bold 
and hazardous to use metaphors so freely, without interposing 
some mitigating phrase, such as, " If I may be allowed the expres- 
sion," or some equivalent excuse. At the same time, Longinus 
finds fault with Plato for hazarding some metaphors, which indeed 
appear to be equally affected and extravagant, when he says, " the 
government of a state should not resemble a bowl of hot ferment- 
ing wine, but a cool and moderate beverage chastised by the sober 
deity," — a metaphor that signifies nothing more than " mixed or 
lowered with water." Demetrius Phalereus justly observes, that 
" though a judicious use of metaphors wonderfully raises, sublimes, 
and adorns oratory or elocution, yet they should seem to flow 
naturally from the subject ; and too great a redundancy of them 
inflates the discourse to a mere rhapsody." The same observation 
will hold in poetry ; and the more liberal or sparing use of them 
will depend in a great measure on the nature of the subject. 

Passion itself is very figurative, and often bursts out into meta- 
phors ; but in touching the pathos, the poet must be perfectly well 
acquainted with the emotions of the human soul, and carefully 
distinguish between those metaphors which rise glowing from 
the heart, and those cold conceits which are engendered in the 
fancy. Should one of these last unfortunately intervene, it will be 
apt to destroy the whole effect of the most pathetical incident or 
situation. Indeed, it requires the most delicate taste and a con- 
summate knowledge of propriety to employ metaphors in such a 
manner as to avoid what the ancients call the to if/vxpov, the frigid, 
or false sublime. Instances of this kind were frequent even among 



418 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

the correct ancients. Sappho herself is blamed for using the 
hyperbole XevKorepoL xiovos, whiter than snow. Demetrius is so 
nice as to be disgusted at the simile of swift as the wind; though 
in speaking of a race-horse, we know from experience that this 
is not even an hyperbole. He would have had more reason to 
censure that kind of metaphor which Aristotle styles kolt ivepyaav 
[forcible], exhibiting things inanimate as endued with sense and 
reason ; such as that of the sharp-pointed arrow, eager to take 
wing among the crowd. 

'0£v/3e\rjs, kolO' o/juXov l-Ki-nrkcrOai /xeveatvcoi/. 2 

Not but that, in descriptive poetry, this figure is often allowed 
and admired. The cruel sword, the ruthless dagger, the ruffian 
blast, are epithets which frequently occur. The faithful bosom of 
the earth, the joyous boughs, the trees that admire their images 
reflected in the stream, and many other examples of this kind, are 
found disseminated through the works of our best modern poets : 
yet still they must be sheltered under the privilege of the poe tica 
licentia ; and, except in poetry, they would give offence. 

More chaste metaphors are freely used in all kinds of writing ; 
more sparingly in history, and more abundantly in rhetoric : we 
have seen that Plato indulges in them even to excess. The ora- 
tions of Demosthenes are animated and even inflamed with meta- 
phors, some of them so bold as even to entail upon him the 
censure of the critics. 

Tore tcu UvOiDVL tw piqTopL piovri Kad^ lyxcov. 3 

" Then I did not yield to Python the orator, when he overflowed 
you with a tide of eloquence." Cicero is still more liberal in the 
use of them ; he ransacks all nature, and pours forth a redun- 
dancy of figures, even with a lavish hand. Even the chaste 
Xenophon, who generally illustrates his subject by way of simile, 
sometimes ventures to produce an expressive metaphor, such as, 

2 Homer, Iliad, IV. 126. 

8 After Demosthenes, On the Crown. — Reiske, 272 (Rekker, 170), 19, 20. 



ESSAYS. 419 

" part of the phalanx fluctuated in the march " ; and indeed noth- 
ing can be more significant than this word i^cKv/xrjve 4 to represent 
a body of men staggered, and on the point of giving way. Arm- 
strong has used the word fluctuate with admirable efficacy, in his 
philosophical poem, entitled, " The Art of Preserving Health." 

" O when the growling winds contend, and all 
The sounding forest jlztcluates in the storm, 
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din 
Howl o'er the steady battlements — " 

The word fluctuate on this occasion not only exhibits an idea 
of struggling, but also echoes to the sense like the ecf>pi$ev Se /xa^ 5 
of Homer • which, by the by, it is impossible to render into Eng- 
lish, for the verb (/>ptW<o signifies not only to stand erect like 
prickles, as a grove of lances, but also to make a noise like the 
crashing of armor, the hissing of javelins, and the splinters of 
spears. 

Over and above excess of figures, a young author is apt to run 
into a confusion of mixed metaphors, which leave the sense dis- 
jointed, and distract the imagination. Shakspeare is often guilty 
of these irregularities. The soliloquy in Hamlet, which we have 
so often heard extolled in terms of admiration, is, in our opinion, 
a heap of absurdities, whether we consider the situation, the sen- 
timent, the argumentation, or the poetry. Hamlet is informed by 
the Ghost that his father was murdered, and therefore he is 
tempted to murder himself, even after he had promised to take 
vengeance on the usurper, and expressed the utmost eagerness to 
achieve this enterprise. It does not appear that he had the least 
reason to wish for death ; but every motive which may be sup- 
posed to influence the mind of a young prince, concurred to 
render life desirable — revenge towards the usurper; love for 
the . fair Ophelia ; and the ambition of reigning. Besides, when 
he had an opportunity of dying without being accessary to his 

4 Xenophon, Anabasis, I. 8, 18. 

5 The line of battle bristled [with long spears']. — Homer, Iliad, XIII. 339. 



420 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

own death ; when he had nothing to do but, in obedience to his 
uncle's command, to allow himself to be conveyed quietly to 
England where he was sure of suffering death ; instead of amusing 
himself with meditations on mortality, he very wisely consulted 
the means of self-preservation, turned the tables upon his attend- 
ants, and returned to Denmark. But granting him to have been 
reduced to the lowest state of despondence, surrounded with 
nothing but honour and despair, sick of this life and eager to 
tempt futurity, we shall see how far he argues like a philosopher. 

In order to support this general charge against an author so 
universally held in veneration, whose very errors have helped to 
sanctify his character among the multitude, we will descend to 
particulars, and analyze this famous soliloquy. 

Hamlet, having assumed the disguise of madness, as a cloak 
under which he might the more effectually revenge his father's 
death upon the murderer and usurper, appears alone upon the 
stage in a pensive and melancholy attitude, and communes with 
himself in these words : 

" To be, or not to be? that is the question : — " 6 

We have already observed that there is not any apparent cir- 
cumstance in the fate or situation of Hamlet, that should prompt 
him to harbour one thought of self-murder ; and therefore these 
expressions of despair imply an impropriety in point of character. 
But supposing his condition was truly desperate, and he saw no 
possibility of repose but in the uncertain harbour of death, let us 
see in what manner he argues on that subject. The question is, 
" To be, or not to be " ; to die by my own hand, or live and suffer 
the miseries of life. He proceeds to explain the alternative in 
these terms, " Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, or endure, 
the frowns of fortune, or to take arms, and by opposing, end 
them." Here he deviates from his first proposition, and death is 
no longer the question. The only doubt is, whether he will stoop 
to misfortune, or exert his faculties in order to surmount it. This 

6 Here follows the soliloquy, for which see Hamlet, III. i, 56-88. 



ESS A YS. 421 

surely is the obvious meaning, and indeed the only meaning that 
can be implied in these words, 

" Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing, end them." 

He now drops this idea, and reverts to his reasoning on death, 
in the course of which he owns himself deterred from suicide by 
the thoughts of what may follow death : 

"... the dread of something after death, — 
That undiscovered country, from whose bourne 
No traveller returns." 

This might be a good argument in a Heathen or Pagan, and 
such indeed Hamlet really was ; but Shakspeare has already 
represented him as a good Catholic, who must have been ac- 
quainted with the truths of revealed religion, and says expressly 
in this very play, 

"... had not the Everlasting fix'd 
His canon 'gainst self-murder." 

Moreover, he had just been conversing with his father's spirit, 
piping hot from purgatory, which, we would presume, is not within 
the bourne of this world. The dread of what may happen after 
death, says he, 

" Makes us rather bear the ills we have, 
Than fly to others that we know not of." 

This declaration at least implies some knowledge of the other 
world, and expressly asserts that there must be ills in that world, 
though what kind of ills they are we do not know. The argu- 
ment, therefore, may be reduced to this lemma: this world 
abounds with ills which I fear; the other world abounds with 
ills, the nature of which I do not know j therefore, I will rather 
bear those ills I have, "than fly to others which I know not 
of " ; a deduction amounting to a certainty, with respect to the 



422 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

only circumstance that should create a doubt, namely, whether 
in death he should rest from his misery ; and if he was certain 
there were evils in the next world, as well as in this, he had no 
room to reason at all about the matter. What alone could justify 
his thinking on the subject, would have been the hope of flying 
from the ills of this world, without encountering any others in the 
next. 

Nor is Hamlet more accurate in the following reflection : 

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." 

A bad conscience will make us cowards ; but a good conscience 
will make us brave. It does not appear that anything lay heavy on 
his conscience ; and from the premises we cannot help inferring, 
that conscience in this case was entirely out of the question. 
Hamlet was deterred from suicide by a full conviction, that, in fly- 
ing from one sea of troubles which he did know, he should fall 
into another which he did not know. 

His whole chain of reasoning, therefore, seems inconsistent and 
incongruous. " I am doubtful whether I should live, or do vio- 
lence upon my own life ; for I know not whether it is more hon- 
ourable to bear misfortune patiently, than to exert myself in op- 
posing misfortune, and by opposing, end it." Let us throw it 
into the form of a syllogism, it will stand thus : "lam oppressed 
with ills ; I know not whether it is more honourable to bear those 
ills patiently, or to end them by taking arms against them ; ergo, 
I am doubtful whether I should slay myself or live. To die, is no 
more than to sleep ; and to say that by a sleep we end the heart- 
ache," &c, " 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished." Now 
to say it, was of no consequence unless it had been true. " I am 
afraid of the dreams that may happen in that sleep of death ; and 
I choose rather to bear those ills I have in this life, than fly to 
other ills in that undiscovered country, from whose bourne no 
traveller ever returns. I have ills that are almost insupportable in 
this life. I know not what is in the next, because it is an undis- 
covered country : ergo, I had rather bear those ills I have, than fly 



ESSA YS. 423 

to others which I know not of." Here the conclusion is by no 
means warranted by the premises. " I am sore afflicted in this life ; 
but I will rather bear the afflictions of this life, than plunge myself 
in the afflictions of another life ; ergo, conscience makes cowards of 
us all." But this conclusion would justify the logician in saying, 
negatur conscquens ; 7 for it is entirely detached both from the 
major and minor proposition. 

This soliloquy is not less exceptionable in the propriety of ex- 
pression, than in the chain of argumentation. " To die — to 
sleep — no more," contains an ambiguity, which all the art of 
punctuation cannot remove ; for it may signify that " to die " is to 
sleep no more ; or the expression " no more," may be considered 
as an abrupt apostrophe in thinking, as if he meant to say " no 
more of that reflection." " Ay, there's the rub," is a vulgarism 
beneath the dignity of Hamlet's character, and the words that 
follow leave the sense imperfect : 

" For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause." 

Not the dreams that might come, but the fear of what dreams 
might come, occasioned the pause or hesitation. Respect in the 
same line may be allowed to pass for consideration : but 

"The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely," 

according to the invariable acceptation of the words wrong and 
contumely, can signify nothing but the wrongs sustained by the 
oppressor, and the contumely or abuse thrown upon the proud 
man ; though it is plain that Shakspeare used them in a different 
sense : neither is the word spurn a substantive, yet as such he has 
inserted it in these lines : 

" The insolence of office, and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes." 

If we consider the metaphors of the soliloquy, we shall find them 
jumbled together in a strange confusion. 

7 The conclusion is denied ; i.e. does not folloiv from the premises. 



424 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

If the metaphors were reduced to painting, we should find it a 
very difficult task, if not altogether impracticable, to represent, 
with any propriety, outrageous fortune using her slings and arrows, 
between which indeed there is no sort of analogy in nature. 
Neither can any figure be more ridiculously absurd than that of a 
man taking arms against the sea, exclusive of the incongruous 
medley of slings, arrows, and seas, justled within the compass of 
one reflection. What follows is a strange rhapsody of broken im- 
ages of sleeping, dreaming, and shifting off a coil, which last con- 
veys no idea that can be represented on canvas. A man may be 
exhibited shuffling off his garments or his chains ; but how he 
should shuffle off a coil, which is another term for noise and tu- 
mult, we cannot comprehend. Then we have " long-lived calam- 
ity," and "time armed with whips and scorn"; and "patient 
merit spurned at by unworthiness," and " misery with a bare bod- 
kin going to make his own quietus," which at best is but a mean 
metaphor. These are followed by figures " sweating under fardels 
of burdens," " puzzled with doubts," " shaking with fears," and 
" flying from evils." Finally, we see " resolution sicklied o'er with 
pale thought," a conception like that of representing health by 
sickness ; and a " current of pith turned awry so as to lose the 
name of action," which is both an error in fancy, and a solecism in 
sense. In a word, this soliloquy may be compared to the "sEgri 
somnia," and the "Tabula, cujus vance fingunhir species"* 

But while we censure the chaos of broken, incongruous met- 
aphors, we ought also to caution the young poet against the op- 
posite extreme, of pursuing a metaphor until the spirit is quite 
exhausted in a succession of cold conceits ; such as we see in the 
following letter, said to be sent by Tamerlane to the Turkish Em- 
peror Bajazet. "Where is the monarch that dares oppose our 
arms ? Where is the potentate who doth not glory in being num- 
bered among our vassals? As for thee, descended from a Tur- 

8 "... a sick maris dreams 

Varies all shapes and mixes all extremes" — 

Francis. — Prior's note. 



ESSA VS. 425 

coman mariner, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath 
been wrecked in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that 
thou shouldest furl the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of 
repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the harbour 
of safety ; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish 
in the sea of that punishment thou hast deserved." 

But if these laboured conceits are ridiculous in poetry, they are 
still more inexcusable in prose : such as we find them frequently 
occur in Strada's Bellum Belgicum. " Fix descenderat a prcetoria 
navi Ccesar, cum fceda ilico exorta in portu tempestas ; classcm 
impetu disjecit, prcetoriam hausit ; quasi non vecturam amplius 
Ccesarem Ccesarisque fortunam." " Caesar had scarcely set his 
feet on shore, when a terrible tempest arising, shattered the fleet 
even in the harbour, and sent to the bottom the praetorian ship, as 
if he resolved it should no longer carry Caesar and his fortunes." 

Yet this is modest in comparison of the following flowers : 
" Alii, pubis e tormento catenis discerpti sectique, dimidiate cor- 
pore pugnabant sibi superstitcs, ac pcremptce partis ultores." 
" Others, dissevered and cut in twain by chain-shot, fought with 
one-half of their bodies that remained, in revenge of the other 
half that was slain." 

Homer, Horace, and even the chaste Virgil, is not free from 
conceits. The latter, speaking of a man's hand cut off in battle, 
says : 

" Te decisa suum, Laride, dextera qiucrit ; 
Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque rt'traclanl," 9 

thus enduing the amputated hand with sense and volition. This, 
to be sure, is a violent figure, and hath been justly condemned by 
some accurate critics ; but we think they are too severe in extend- 
ing the same censure to some other passages in the most admired 
authors. Virgil, in his sixth Eclogue, says : 

9 " Thy hand, poor Laris, sought its absent lord ; 
Thy dying fingers, quivering on the plant, 
With starts convulsive grasp the steel in vain" — 

Dryden. — Prior's note. Virgil, .lEneid, X. 395-6. 



426 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

" Omnia qtuc, Phabo quondam meditante, beatns 
Audiit Eurotas, j ussitque ediscere lauros, 
Ille canity 

"Whate'er, when Phoebus bless' d the Arcadian plain, 
Eurotas heard and taught his bays the strain, 
The senior sung — " 10 

And Pope has copied the conceit in his Pastorals : 

" Thames heard the numbers as he flow'd along, 
And bade his willows learn the moving song." 

Vida thus begins his first Eclogue : 

" Dicite, vos muscc, etjuvenum memorate querelas ; 
Dicitc : nam motas ipsas ad carmina cautes, 
Et requiesse sues perhibent vaga flumina cursus" 

"Say, heavenly muse, their youthful frays rehearse; 
Begin, ye daughters of immortal verse; 
Exulting rocks have own'd the power of song, 
And rivers listen'd as they flow'd along.'' 

Racine adopts the same bold figure in his Phaedra : 

" Le Jiot qui Vapporta recule epouvante : " 
" The wave that bore him backwards shrunk appall'd." 

Even Milton has indulged himself in the same license of 
expression : 

" . . .As when to them who sail 
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past 
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow 
Sabsean odor from the spicy shore 
Of Araby the blest; with such delay 
Well pleas'd they slack their course, and many a league, 
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles." 

Shakspeare says : 

"... I've seen 
Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam, 
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds." n 

10 Virgil, Eclogues, VI. 82-84. n Julius Cccsar, I. 3, 6-8. 



ESSA VS. 427 

And indeed more correct writers, both ancient and modern, 
abound with the same kind of figure, which is reconciled to pro- 
priety, and even invested with beauty, by the efficacy of the proso- 
popoeia, which personifies the object. Thus when Virgil says 
Enipeus heard the songs of Apollo, he raises up, as by enchant- 
ment, the idea of a river god crowned with sedges, his head raised 
above the stream, and in his countenance the expression of pleased 
attention. By the same magic we see, in the couplet quoted from 
Pope's Pastorals, old father Thames leaning upon his arm, and 
listening to the poet's strain. 

Thus, in the regions of poetry all nature, even the passions and 
affections of the mind, may be personified into picturesque figures 
for the entertainment of the reader. Ocean smiles or frowns, as 
the sea is calm or tempestuous ; a Triton rules on every angry 
billow; every mountain has its Nymph, every stream its Naiad, 
every tree its Hamadryad, and every art its Genius. We cannot, 
therefore, assent to those who censure Thomson as licentious for 
using the following figure : 

" O vale of bliss ! O softly swelling hills ! 
On which the power of cultivation lies, 
And joys to see the wonders of his toil." 

We cannot conceive a more beautiful image than that of the 
genius of agriculture distinguished by the implements of his art, 
imbrowned with labour, glowing with health, crowned with a garland 
of foliage, flowers, and fruit, lying stretched at ease on the brow of 
a gently-swelling hill, and contemplating with pleasure the happy 
effects of his own industry. 

Neither can we join issue against Shakspeare for his comparison, 
which hath likewise incurred the censure of the critics : 

"... The noble sister of Poplicola, 
The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle 
That's curdled [curdied] by the frost from purest snow, 
And hangs on Dian's temple." 12 

12 Coriolanus, V. 3, 64-7. 



428 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

This is no more than illustrating a quality of the mind, by com- 
paring it with a sensible object. If there is no impropriety in 
saying such a man is true as steel, firm as a rock, inflexible as an 
oak, unsteady as the ocean ; or in describing a disposition cold as 
; ice, or fickle as the wind ; and these expressions are justified by 
constant practice ; we shall hazard an assertion, that the compari- 
son of a chaste woman to an icicle is proper and picturesque, as it 
obtains only in the circumstances of cold and purity : but that the 
addition of its being curdled from the purest snow, and hanging 
on the temple of Diana, the patroness of virginity, heightens the 
whole into a most beautiful simile, that gives a very respectable 
and amiable idea of the character in question. 

The simile is no more than an extended metaphor, introduced 
to illustrate and beautify the subject ; it ought to be apt, striking, 
properly pursued, and adorned with all the graces of poetical 
melody. 

But a simile of this kind ought never to proceed from the 
mouth of a person under any great agitation of spirit ; such as a 
tragic character overwhelmed with grief, distracted by contending 
cares, or agonizing in the pangs of death. The language of pas- 
sion will not admit simile, Which is always the result of study and 
deliberation. We will not allow a hero the privilege of a dying 
swan, which is said to chant its approaching fate in the most 
melodious strain : and therefore, nothing can be more ridiculously 
unnatural, than the representation of a lover dying upon the stage 
with a laboured simile in his mouth. 

The orientals, whose language was extremely figurative, have 
been very careless in the choice of their similes ; provided the 
resemblance obtained in one circumstance, they minded not 
whether they disagreed with the subject in every other respect. 
Many instances of this defect in congruity may be culled from the 
most sublime parts of Scripture. 

Homer has been blamed for the bad choice of his similes on 
some particular occasions. He compares Ajax to an ass, in the 
Iliad, and Ulysses to a steak broiling on the coals, in the Odyssey. 



ESSA VS. 429 

His admirers have endeavoured to excuse him, by reminding us 
of the simplicity of the age in which he wrote • but they have not 
been able to prove that any ideas of dignity or importance were, 
even in those days, affixed to the character of an ass, or the qual- 
ity of a beef-collop ; therefore, they were very improper illustra- 
tions for any situation in which a hero ought to be represented. 

Virgil has degraded the wife of king Latinus, by comparing her, 
when she was actuated by the Fury, to a top which the boys lash 
for diversion. This, doubtless, is a low image, though in other 
respects the comparison is not destitute of propriety ; but he is 
much more justly censured for the following simile, which has no 
sort of reference to the subject. Speaking of Turnus, he says : 

"... medio dux agmine Turnus 

Vertitur arma tenens, et toto vertice suprh est, 
Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altus 
Per taciturn Ganges: aut pingui flumine Nilus 
Cum refluit campis, etjam se condidit a/veo." 

" . . . But Turnus, chief amidst the warrior train, 
In armour towers the tallest on the plain, 
The Ganges thus by seven rich streams supplied, 
A mighty mass devolves in silent pride : 
Thus Nilus pours forth his prolific urn, 
When from the fields o'erflowed his vagrant streams return." 13 

These, no doubt, are majestic images ; but they bear no sort of 
resemblance to a hero glittering in armour at the head of his forces. 

Horace has been ridiculed by some shrewd critics for this com- 
parison, which, however, we think is more defensible than the 
former. Addressing himself to Munatius Plancus, he says : 

" Albus ut obscuro deterget nubila coelo 
Scepe Notus, neque parturit imbres 
Perpetuos ; sic tu sapiens jinire memento 

Tristitiam, vitceque labores 
Molli, Plance, mero. — " 

is Virgil, Mneid. IX. 28-32. 



430 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

u As Notus often, when the welkin lowers, 
Sweeps off the clouds, nor teems perpetual showers, 
So let thy wisdom, free from anxious strife, 
In mellow wine dissolve the cares of life." — Dunkin. 14 

The analogy, it must be confessed, is not very striking; but 
nevertheless, it is not altogether void of propriety. The poet 
reasons thus : as the south wind, though generally attended with 
rain, is often known to dispel the clouds, and render the weather 
serene ; so do you, though generally on the rack of thought, re- 
member to relax sometimes, and drown your cares in wine. As 
the south wind is not always moist, so you ought not always to be 
dry. 

A few instances of inaccuracy, or mediocrity, can never dero- 
gate from the superlative merit of Homer and Virgil, whose poems 
are the great magazines, replete with every species of beauty and 
magnificence, particularly abounding with similes, which astonish, 
delight, and transport the reader. 

Every simile ought not only to be well adapted to the subject, 
but also to include every excellence of description, and to be col- 
oured with the warmest tints of poetry. Nothing can be more 
happily hit off than the following in the Georgics, to which the 
poet compares Orpheus lamenting his lost Eurydice. 

" Qualis populed nicer ens Philomela sub umbra 
Amissos queritur foetus, quos durus arator 
Observans nido im plumes detraxit ; at ilia 
Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen 
Integral, el mcestis late loca questibtis implet" 

" So Philomela, from th' umbrageous wood, 
In strains melodious mourns her tender brood, 
Snatch'd from the nest by some rude ploughman's hand, 
On some lone bough the warbler takes her stand; 
The live-long night she mourns the cruel wrong, 
And hill and dale resound the plaintive song." 15 

14 Horace, Odes, I. 7, 15-19. 15 Virgil, Georgics, IV. 51 1-15. 



ESSA VS. 431 

Here we not only find the most scrupulous propriety, and the 
happiest choice, in comparing the Thracian bard to Philomel the 
poet of the grove ; but also the most beautiful description, con- 
taining a fine touch of the pathos, in which last particular indeed 
Virgil, in our opinion, excels all other poets, whether ancient or 
modern. 

One would imagine that nature had exhausted itself, in order 
to embellish the poems of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, with similes 
and metaphors. The first of these very often uses the compari- 
son of the wind, the whirlwind, the hail, the torrent, to express the 
rapidity of his combatants ; but when he comes to describe the 
velocity of the immortal horses that drew the chariot of Juno, he 
raises his ideas to the subject, and, as Longinus observes, measures 
every leap by the whole breadth of the horizon. 

v Oaaov 8' T^epoeiScs dvrjp ISev 6<f}6a\fAOi(riv, 
""H/xevo? iv (TKOTTLrj Xevaaoiv €7rt o?vo7ra ttovtov, 
Tocro-ov €7n6pw(rKov(n OeC)v v^e^ee? ittttol. 

" For as a watchman from some rock on high 
O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye; 
Through such a space of air with thundering sound 
At every leap th' immortal coursers bound." 16 

The celerity of this goddess seems to be a favourite idea with 
the poet ; for in another place, he compares it to the thought of 
a traveller revolving in his mind the different places he had- seen, 
and passing through them in imagination more swift than the 
lightning flies from east to west. 

Homer's best similes have been copied by Virgil, and almost 
every succeeding poet, however they may have varied in the 
manner of expression. 

In the third book of the Iliad, Menelaus seeing Paris, is com- 
pared to a hungry lion espying a hind or goat. 

Qore AcW i^dpr}, fxcydXu) e7rt craijUaTi Kvpo-as, 
Eupwv 77 e\a<f>ov Kepaov, rj aypiov cuya, etc. 

16 Homer, Iliad, V. 770-72. 



432 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

" So joys the lion, if a branching deer 
Or mountain goat his bulky prize appear; 
In vain the youths oppose, the mastiffs bay, 
The lordly savage rends the panting prey, 
Thus fond of vengeance, with a furious bound 
In clanging arms he leaps upon the ground." 17 

The Mantuan bard, in the tenth book of the Eneid, applies the 
same simile to Mezentius, when he beholds Acron in the battle. 

" Impastus stabula alta leo ceu scepe peragrans ; 
(Sitadet eni??i vesana fames), si forte fugacem 
Conspexit capream, aut surgentem in cornua cervum 
Gaudel, hians immanh, comasque arrexit, et Jueret 
Visceribus super accumbens ; lavit improba teter 
Or a cruor." 

" Then as a hungry lion, who beholds 
A gamesome goat who frisks about the folds, 
Or beamy stag that grazes on the plain; 
He runs, he roars, he shakes his rising mane : 
He grins, and opens wide his greedy jaws, 
The prey lies panting underneath his paws; 
He fills his famish'd maw, his mouth runs o'er 
With unchew'd morsels, while he churns the gore." 18 — Dryden. 

The reader will perceive that Virgil has improved the simile in 
one particular, and in another fallen short of his original. The 
description of the lion shaking his mane, opening his hideous 
jaws distained with the blood of his prey, is great and pictur- 
esque ; but on the other hand, he has omitted the circumstance 
of devouring it without being intimidated, or restrained by the 
dogs and the youths that surround him ; a circumstance that adds 
greatly to our ideas of his strength, intrepidity, and importance. 

17 Homer, Iliad, III. 23 ff. 18 Virgil, JEneid, X . 723-28. 



XXI. 

SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

(1709-1784.) 

PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 

[Written in 1765.] 

Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults 
sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall show 
them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without 
envious malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can 
be more innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to 
renown ; and little regard is due to that bigotry which sets candour 
higher than truth. 

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the 
evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and 
is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems 
to write without any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a 
system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reason- 
ably must think morally ; but his precepts and axioms drop cas- 
ually from him ; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor 
is always careful to show in the virtuous a disapprobation of the 
wicked ; he carries his persons indifferently through right and 
wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and 
leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the bar- 
barity of his age cannot estimate ; for it is always a writer's duty 
to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on 
time or place. 

The plots are often so loosely formed that a very slight consid- 
eration may improve them, and so carelessly pursued that he 

433 



434 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits 
opportunities of instructing or delighting, which the train of his 
story seems to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhi- 
bitions which would be more affecting, for the sake of those which 
are more easy. 

It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part is 
evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his 
work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch 
the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most 
vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced 
or imperfectly represented. 

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to 
one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and 
opinions of another, at the expense not only of likelihood, but of 
possibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal 
than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators. We 
need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see 
the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the gothick 
mythology of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only vio- 
lator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who wanted not 
the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded the 
pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet, and 
security, with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure. 

In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful when he 
engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests 
of sarcasm ; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry 
licentious ; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much deli- 
cacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any 
appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real 
conversation of his time is not easy to determine : the reign of 
Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a time of stateli- 
ness, formality, and reserve ; yet perhaps the relaxations of that 
severity were not very elegant. There must, however, have been 
always some modes of gayety preferable to others, and a writer 
ought to choose the best. 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 435 

In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his 
labour is more. The effusions of passion, which exigence forces 
out, are for the most part striking and energetick ; but whenever 
he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his 
throes is tumour, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. 

In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and 
a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imper- 
fectly in many words which might have been more plainly deliv- 
ered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, 
as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the 
action ; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by 
frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it an incumbrance, and 
instead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it 
by dignity and splendour. 

His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, 
for his power was the power of nature ; when he endeavoured, 
like other tragick writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, 
and instead of inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show 
how much his stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom es- 
capes without the pity or resentment of his reader. 

It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an 
unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not 
reject ; he struggles with it a while, and, if it continues stubborn, 
comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disen- 
tangled and solved bv those who have more leisure to bestow 
upon it. 

Not that always where the language is intricate the thought is 
subtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky ; the 
equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial sen- 
timents and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they 
are recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling figures. 

But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to com- 
plain when he approaches nearest to his highest excellence, and 
seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them 
with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of inno- 



436 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

cence, or the crosses of love. What he does best, he soon ceases 
to do. He is not soft and pathetic without some idle conceit, or 
contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than 
he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in 
the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity. A quib- 
ble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller : 
he follows it at all adventures ; it is sure to lead him out of his 
way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant 
power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. What- 
ever be the dignity or profundity of his disposition, whether he be 
enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing 
attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a 
quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. 
A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside 
from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and. 
barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to pur- 
chase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble 
was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was 
content to lose it. 

It will be thought strange that, in enumerating the defects of 
this writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities ; 
his violation of those laws which have been instituted and estab- 
lished by the joint authority of poets and criticks. 

For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to 
critical justice, without making any other demand in his favour, 
than that which must be indulged to all human excellence : that his 
virtues be rated with his failings : but from the censure which this 
irregularity may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence to that 
learning which I must oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him. 

His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not 
subject to any of their laws ; nothing more is necessary to all the 
praise which they expect, than that the changes of action be so 
prepared as to be understood ; that the incidents be various and 
affecting, and the characters consistent, natural, and distinct. No 
other unity is intended, and therefore none is to be sought. 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 437 

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of 
action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and 
regularly unravelled : he does not endeavour to hide his design 
only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and 
Shakespeare is the poet of nature : but his plan has commonly, 
what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end ; one 
event is concatenated with another, and the conclusion follows by 
easy consequence. There are perhaps some incidents that might be 
spared, as in other poets there is much talk that only fills up time 
upon the stage ; but the general system makes gradual advances, 
and the end of the play is the end of expectation. 

To the unities of time and place he has shown no regard .; and 
perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they stand will 
diminish their value, and withdraw from them the veneration 
which, from the time of Corneille, they have very generally 
received, by discovering that they have given more trouble to the 
poet than pleasure to the auditor. 

The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises 
from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The 
criticks hold it impossible that an action of months or years can 
be possibly believed to pass in three hours ; or that the spectator 
can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and 
return between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns 
besieged, while an exile wanders, and returns, or till he whom 
they saw courting his mistress shall lament the untimely fall of his 
son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction loses 
its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. 

From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the con- 
traction of place. The spectator, who knows that he saw the first 
act at Alexandria, cannot suppose that he sees the next at Rome, 
at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in so 
short a time, have transported him ; he knows with certainty that 
he has not changed his place, and he knows that place cannot 
change itself; that what was a house cannot become a plain; 
that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis. 



438 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over 
the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without 
resistance or reply. It is time, therefore, to tell him by the 
authority of Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unquestionable 
principle, a position, which, while his breath is forming it into 
words, his understanding pronounces to be false. It is false, that 
any representation is mistaken for reality ; that any dramatick 
fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, 
was ever credited. 

The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first 
hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes that when 
the play opens, the spectator really imagines himself at Alexan- 
dria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage 
to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. 
Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He that can 
take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may 
take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, 
if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation ; if the spectator 
can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander 
and Caesar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of 
Pharsalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation 
above the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of 
empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial 
nature. 

There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstacy 
should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century 
in that calenture of the brain that can make the stage a field. 

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and 
know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, 
and that the players are only players. They came to hear a certain 
number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. 
The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some 
place ; but the different actions that complete a story may be in 
places very remote from each other ; and where is the absurdity 
of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and then Sicily, 






PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 439 

which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a 
modern theatre? 

By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended ; 
the time required by the fable elapses for the most part between 
the acts ; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real 
and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations 
for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, 
the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in 
the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus ; we know that there is 
neither war, nor preparation for war ; we know that we are neither 
in Rome nor Pontus ; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are 
before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive 
actions ; and why may not the second imitation represent an ac- 
tion that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with 
it that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene ? Time is, 
of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination \ a 
lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In 
contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions, and 
therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see 
their imitation. 

It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. 
It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, 
whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original ; as repre- 
senting to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were 
to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be 
done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils 
before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we our- 
selves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that 
we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a 
moment ; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the 
presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she 
remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of 
tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction ; if we thought 
murders and treasons real, they would please no more. 

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mis- 



440 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

taken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When 
the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are 
not supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness ; 
but we consider how we should be pleased with such fountains 
playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are 
agitated in reading the history of Henry the Fifth, yet no man 
takes his book for the field of Agincourt. A dramatick exhibi- 
tion is a book recited with concomitants that increase or diminish 
its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre 
than in the page ; imperial tragedy is always less. The humour of 
Petruchio may be heightened by grimace ; but what voice or what 
gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the soliloquy of Cato ? 

A play read affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore 
evident that the action is not supposed to be real ; and it follows 
that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to 
pass, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken 
by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, be- 
fore whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolu- 
tions of an empire. 

Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by 
design, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, 
impossible to decide and useless to inquire. We may reasonably 
suppose that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the coun- 
sels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last 
deliberately persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by 
chance. As nothing is essential to the fable but unity of action, 
and as the unities of time and place arise evidently from false 
assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, 
lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented that 
they were not known by him, or not observed : nor, if such 
another poet could arise, should I very vehemently reproach him 
that his first act passed at Venice, and his next in Cyprus. Such 
violations of rules merely positive become the comprehensive 
genius of Shakespeare, and such censures are suitable to the mi- 
nute and slender criticism of Voltaire. 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 441 

" Non usque adeo permiscuit imis 
Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Metelli 
Serventur leges, malint a Cccsare tolli." x 

Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but 
recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me ; 
before such authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think the 
present question one of those that are to be decided by mere 
authority, but because it is to be suspected, that these precepts 
have not been so easily received, but for better reasons than I 
have yet been able to find. 

The result of my inquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to 
boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not 
essential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes con- 
duce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the noble 
beauties of variety and instruction ; and that a play written with 
nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an 
elaborate curiosity, as the product of superfluous and ostenta- 
tious art, by which is shown, rather what is possible, than what is 
necessary. 

He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall pre- 
serve all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the 
architect, who shall display all the orders of architecture in a 
citadel, without any deduction from its strength : but the princi- 
pal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy ; and the greatest 
graces of a play are to copy nature, and instruct life. Perhaps, 
what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written, may 
recall the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am 
almost frightened at my own temerity; and when I estimate the 
fame and the strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, 
am ready to sink down in reverential silence ; as ^Eneas withdrew 
from the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, 
and Juno heading the besiegers. 

1 Time has not so far confused the highest with the lowest, that, if laws may 
be observed by the command of Metellus, they may not prefer to be annulled by 

Cccsar. 



442 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

Those whom . my arguments cannot persuade to give their 
approbation to the judgment of Shakespeare, will easily, if they 
consider the condition of his life, make some allowance for his 
ignorance. 

Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be 
compared with the state of the age in which he lived, and with 
his own particular opportunities ; and though to the reader a book 
be not worse or better for the circumstances of the author, yet as 
there is always a silent reference of human works to human abili- 
ties, and as the inquiry, how far man may extend his designs, or 
how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity 
than in what rank we shall place any particular performance, 
curiosity is always busy to discover the instruments, as well as to 
survey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to 
original powers, and how much to casual and adventitious help. 
The palaces of Peru or Mexico were certainly mean and incom- 
modious habitations, if compared to the houses of European 
monarchs ; yet who could forbear to view them with astonishment, 
who remembered that they were built without the use of iron ? 

The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet strug- 
gling to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been 
transplanted hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth \ and the 
learned languages had been successfully cultivated by Lilly, Lina- 
cre, and More ; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner ; and afterwards 
by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham. Greek was now taught 
to boys in the principal schools ; and those who united elegance 
with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and Spanish 
poets. But literature was yet confined to professed scholars, or 
to men and women of high rank. The publick was gross and 
dark j and to be able to read and write was an accomplishment 
still valued for its rarity. 

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly 
awakened to literary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the 
true state of things, knows not how to judge of that which is pro- 
posed as its resemblance. Whatever is remote from common 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 443 

appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity ; 
and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is 
the vulgar. The study of those who then aspired to plebeian learn- 
ing was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchant- 
ments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume. 

The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, 
has no taste of the insipidity of truth. A play which imitated only 
the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers 
of Palmerin and Guy of JVarwieh, have made little impression ; 
he that wrote for such an audience was under the necessity of 
looking round for strange events and fabulous transactions ; and 
that incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is offended, was 
the chief recommendation of writings to unskilful curiosity. 

Our author's plots are generally borrowed from novels ; and it 
is reasonable to suppose that he chose the most popular, such as 
were read by many, and related by more ; for his audience could 
not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had 
they not held the thread of the story in their hands. 

The stories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were in 
his time accessible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, 
which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn? was a 
little pamphlet of those times ; and old Mr. Cibber remembered 
the tale of Hamlet in plain English prose, which the criticks have 
now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus. His English histories he took 
from English chronicles and English ballads ; and as the ancient 
writers were made known to his countrymen by version, they sup- 
plied him with new objects ; he dilated some of Plutarch's Lives 
into plays, when they had been translated by North. 

His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crowded 
with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more 
easily caught than by sentiment or argumentation ; and such is 

2 It is copied from Lodge's Rosalynd, first published in 1590, second edition 
1592, from which Rosalynd is reprinted in Collier's Shakespeare's Library, 
Vol. II. Moreover, The Tale of Gamelyn is not Chaucer's. See Skeat's 
edition of The Tale of Gamelyn, and Furness's As You Like It, Appendix. 



444 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

the power of the marvellous, even over those who despise it, that 
every man finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of 
Shakespeare than of any other writer ; others please us by particu- 
lar speeches ; but he always makes us anxious for the event, and 
has perhaps excelled all but Homer in securing the first purpose 
of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity, and 
compelling him that reads his work to read it through. 

The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the 
same original. As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the 
eye to the ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. 
Those to whom our author's labours were exhibited had more 
skill in pomps or processions than in poetical language, and per- 
haps wanted some visible and discriminating events, as comments 
on the dialogue. He knew how he should most please ; and 
whether his practice is more agreeable to nature, or whether his 
example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that on our stage 
something must be done as well as said, and inactive declamation 
is very coldly heard, however musical or elegant, passionate or 
sublime. 

Voltaire expresses his wonder that our author's extravagances 
are endured by a nation which has seen the tragedy of Cato. 
Let him be answered that Addison speaks the language of poets ; 
and Shakespeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties 
which enamour us of its author, but we see nothing that acquaints 
us with human sentiments or human actions ; we place it with the 
fairest and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by 
conjunction with learning ; but Othello is the vigorous and viva- 
cious offspring of observation impregnated by genius. Cato af- 
fords a splendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and 
delivers just and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated, and 
harmonious, but its hop'es and fears communicate no vibration to 
the heart ; the composition refers us only to the writer ; we pro- 
nounce the name of Cato, but we think on Addison. 

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately 
formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented 






PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 445 

with flowers ; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which 
oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed 
sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter 
to myrtles and to roses ; filling the eye with awful pomp, and grati- 
fying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cab- 
inets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, 
and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which 
contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though 
clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with 
a mass of meaner materials. 

It has been much disputed, whether Shakespeare owed his ex- 
cellence to his own native force, or whether he had the common 
helps of scholastick education, the precepts of critical science, 
and the examples of ancient authors. 

There has always prevailed a tradition, that Shakespeare wanted 
learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the 
dead languages. Jonson, his friend, affirms, that he had small 
Latin, and less Greek ; who, besides that he had no imaginable 
temptation to falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and 
acquisitions of Shakespeare were known to multitudes. His evi- 
dence ought therefore to decide the controversy, unless some tes- 
timony of equal force could be opposed. 

Some have imagined that they have discovered deep learning 
in many imitations of old writers ; but the examples which I have 
known urged were drawn from books translated in his time ; or 
were such easy coincidences of thought as will happen to all who 
consider the same subjects ; or such remarks on life or axioms of 
morality as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the 
world in proverbial sentences. 

I have found it remarked, that, in this important sentence, " Go 
before, I'll follow," we read a translation of I prce, sequar? I 
have been told, that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, 
" I cry'd to sleep again," the author imitates Anacreon, who had, 
like every other man, the same wish on the same occasion. 
3 Terence, Andria, I., i, 144. 



446 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

There are a few passages which may pass for imitations, but so 
few that the exception only confirms the rule ; he obtained them 
from accidental quotations, or by oral communication, and as he 
used what he had, would have used more if he had obtained it. 

The Comedy of Errors is confessedly taken from the Mencechmi 
of Plautus, from the only play of Plautus which was then in 
English. What can be more probable than that he who copied 
that would have copied more ; but that those which were not 
translated were inaccessible ? 

Whether he knew the modern languages is uncertain. That 
his plays have some French scenes proves but little ; he might 
easily procure them to be written, and probably, even though he 
had known the language in the common degree, he could not 
have written it without assistance. In the story of Romeo and 
Juliet he is observed to have followed the English translation 
where it deviates from the Italian; but this on the other part 
proves nothing against his knowledge of the original. He was to 
copy, not what he knew himself, but what was known to his 
audience. 

It is most likely that he had learned Latin sufficiently to make 
him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to 
an easy perusal of the Roman authors. Concerning his skill in 
modern languages, I can find no sufficient ground of determina- 
tion • but as no imitations of French or Italian authors have been 
discovered, though the Italian poetry was then high in esteem, I 
am inclined to believe that he read little more than English, and 
chose for his fables only such tales as he found translated. 

That much knowledge is scattered over his works is very justly 
observed by Pope ; but it is often such knowledge as books did 
not supply. He that will understand Shakespeare, must not be 
content to study him in the closet ; he must look for his meaning 
sometimes among the sports of the field, and sometimes among 
the manufactures of the shop. 

There is, however, proof enough that he was a very diligent 
reader, nor was our language then so indigent of books, but that 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 447 

he might very liberally indulge his curiosity without excursion into 
foreign literature. Many of the Roman authors were translated, 
and some of the Greek ; the Reformation had filled the kingdom 
with theological learning ; most of the topicks of human disqui- 
sition had found English writers \ and poetry had been cultivated, 
not only with diligence, but success. This was a stock of knowl- 
edge sufficient for a mind so capable of appropriating and im- 
proving it. 

But the greater part of his excellence was the product of his 
own genius. He found the English stage in a state of the utmost 
rudeness ; no essays either in tragedy or comedy had appeared 
from which it could be discovered to what degree of delight 
either one or other might be carried. Neither character nor 
dialogue were yet understood. Shakespeare may be truly said to 
have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his 
happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height. 

By what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not easily 
known ; for the chronology of his works is yet unsettled. Rowe 
is of opinion that " perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, 
like those of other writers, in his least perfect works ; art had so 
little, and nature so large a share in what he did that for aught I 
know," says he, "the performances of his youth, as they were the 
most vigorous, were the best." 

But the power of nature is only the power of using to any cer- 
tain purpose the materials which diligence procures, or oppor- 
tunity supplies. Nature gives no man knowledge, and, when 
images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in 
combining or applying them. Shakespeare, however favoured by 
nature, could impart only what he had learned ; and as he must 
increase his ideas, like other mortals, by gradual acquisition, he, 
like them, grew wiser as he grew older, could display life better, 
as he knew it more, and instruct with more efficacy, as he was 
himself more amply instructed. 

There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction 
which books and precepts cannot confer; from this almost all 



448 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

original and native excellence proceeds. Shakespeare must have 
looked upon mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree 
curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their characters from 
preceding writers, and diversify them only by the accidental 
appendages of present manners ; the dress is a little varied, but 
the body is the same. Our author had both matter and form to 
provide ; for, except the characters of Chaucer, to whom I think 
he is not much indebted, there were no writers in English, and 
perhaps not many in other modern languages, which showed life 
in its native colours. 

The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man 
had not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to 
analyse the mind, to trace the passions to their sources, to unfold 
the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of 
the heart for the motives of action. All those enquiries, which 
from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, 
have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with 
idle subtility, were yet unattempted. The tales with which the 
infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial 
appearances of action, related the events, but omitted the causes, 
and were formed for such as delighted in wonders rather than in 
truth. Mankind was not then to be studied in the closet ; he that 
would know the world, was under the necessity of gleaning his 
own remarks by mingling as he could in its business and amuse- 
ments. 

Boyle congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it 
favoured his curiosity by facilitating his access. Shakespeare had 
no such advantage ; he came to London a needy adventurer, and 
lived for a time by very mean employments. Many works of 
genius and learning have been performed in states of life that 
appear very little favourable to thought or to enquiry ; so many, 
that he who considers them is inclined to think that he sees enter- 
prize and perseverance predominating over all external agency, 
and bidding help and hindrance vanish before them. The genius 
of Shakespeare was not to be depressed by the weight of poverty, 






PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 449 

nor limited by the narrow conversation to which men in want are 
inevitably condemned \ the incumbrances of his fortune were 
shaken from his mind, " as dew drops from a lion's mane." 

Though he had so many difficulties to encounter, and so little 
assistance to surmount them, he has been able to obtain an exact 
knowledge of many modes of life, and many casts of native dispo- 
sitions ; to vary them with great multiplicity ; to mark them by 
nice distinctions ; and to show them in full view by proper com- 
binations. In this part of his performances he had none to imi- 
tate, but has been himself imitated by all succeeding writers ; and 
it may be doubted whether from all his successours more maxims 
of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can 
be collected, than he alone has given to his country. 

Nor was his attention confined to the actions of men ; he was 
an exact surveyor of the inanimate world ; his descriptions have 
always some peculiarities, gathered by contemplating things as 
they really exist. It may be observed that the oldest poets of 
many nations preserve their reputation, and that the following gen- 
erations of wit, after a short celebrity, sink into oblivion. The 
first, whoever they be, must take their sentiments and descriptions 
immediately from knowledge ; the resemblance is therefore just, 
their descriptions are verified by every eye, and their sentiments 
acknowledged by every breast. Those whom their fame invites to 
the same studies copy partly them, and partly nature, till the books 
of one age gain such authority as to stand in the place of nature to 
another, and imitation, always deviating a little, becomes at last 
capricious and casual. Shakespeare, whether life or nature be his 
subject, shows plainly that he has seen with his own eyes ; he 
gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by 
the intervention of any other mind ; the ignorant feel his represen- 
tations to be just, and the learned see that they are complete. 

Perhaps it would not be easy to find any author, except Homer, 
who invented so much as Shakespeare, who so much advanced 
the studies which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon 
his age or country. The form, the characters, the language, and 



450 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

the shows of the English drama are his. " He seems," says Den- 
nis, " to have been the very original of our English tragical 
harmony, that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by 
dissyllable and trissyllable terminations. For the diversity distin- 
guishes it from heroick harmony, and by bringing it nearer to 
common use makes it more proper to gain attention, and more 
fit for action and dialogue. Such verse we make when we are 
writing prose ; we make such verse in common conversation." 

I know not whether this praise is rigorously just. The dissylla- 
ble termination, which the critick rightly appropriates to the 
drama, is to be found, though, I think, not in Gorboduc? which is 
confessedly before our author ; yet in Hieronymo* of which the 
date is not certain, but which there is reason to believe at least as 
old as his earliest plays. This however is certain, that he is the 
first who taught either tragedy or comedy to please, there being 
no theatrical piece of any older writer, of which the name is 
known except to antiquaries and collectors of books, which are 
sought because they are scarce, and would not have been scarce 
had they been much esteemed. 

To him we must ascribe the praise, unless Spenser may divide 
it with him, of having first discovered to how much smoothness 
and harmony the English language could be softened. He has 
speeches, perhaps sometimes scenes, which have all the delicacy 
of Rowe, without his effeminacy. He endeavours indeed com- 
monly to strike by the force and vigour of his dialogue, but he 
never executes his purpose better than when he tries to soothe by 
softness. 

Yet it must be at last confessed that, as we owe everything to 
him, he owes something to us ; that, if much of his praise is paid 
by perception and judgment, much is likewise given by custom 

4 Our first tragedy, written in blank verse by Sackville and Norton, and 
acted before the Queen, Jan. 18, 1561. 

5 Ascribed by some to Thomas Kyd, who wrote its continuation, " The 
Spanish Tragedy," acted about 1588. 

6 Johnson singularly omits the tragedies of Marlowe. 



PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE. 451 

and veneration. We fix our eyes upon his graces, and turn 
them from his deformities, and endure in him what we should 
in another loathe or despise. If we endured without praising, 
respect for the father of our drama might excuse us ; but I have 
seen, in the book of some modern critick, a collection of anom- 
alies, which show that he has corrupted language by every mode 
of depravation, but which his admirer has accumulated as a monu- 
ment of honour. 

He has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence ; but per- 
haps not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of 
a contemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion. I am, 
indeed, far from thinking that his works were wrought to his own 
ideas of perfection ; when they were such as would satisfy the 
audience, they satisfied the writer. It is seldom that authors, 
though more studious of fame than Shakespeare, rise much above 
the standard of their own age ; to add a little to what is best will 
always be sufficient for present praise, and those who find them- 
selves exalted into fame, are willing to credit their encomiasts, 
and to spare the labour of contending with themselves. 

It does not appear that Shakespeare thought his works worthy 
of posterity, that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, 
or had any further prospect than of present popularity and present 
profit. When his plays had been acted, his hope was at an end ; 
he solicited no addition of honour from the reader. He there- 
fore made no scruple to repeat the same jests in many dialogues, 
or to entangle different plots by the same knot of perplexity ; 
which may be at least forgiven him by those who recollect, that of 
Congreve's four comedies, two are concluded by a marriage in a 
mask, by a deception, which perhaps never happened, and which, 
whether likely or not, he did not invent. 

So careless was this great poet of future fame that, though he 
retired to ease and plenty, while he was yet little " declined into the 
vale of years," before he could be disgusted with fatigue, or dis- 
abled by infirmity, he made no collection of his works, nor desired 
to rescue those that had been already published from the deprava- 



452 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

tions that obscured them, or secure to the rest a better destiny, by 
giving them to the world in their genuine state. 

Of the plays which bear the name of Shakespeare in the late 
editions, the greater part were not published till about seven years 
after his death ; and the few which appeared in his life are appar- 
ently thrust into the world without the care of the author, and 
therefore probably without his knowledge. 

Of all the publishers, clandestine or professed, the negligence 
or unskilfulness has by the late revisers been sufficiently shown. 
The faults of all are, indeed, numerous and gross, and have not 
only corrupted many passages perhaps beyond recovery, but have 
brought others into suspicion, which are only obscured by obso- 
lete phraseology, or by the writer's unskilfulness or affectation. 
To alter is more easy than to explain, and temerity is a more 
common quality than diligence. Those who saw that they must 
employ conjecture to a certain degree, were willing to indulge it 
a little further. Had the author published his own works, we 
should have sat quickly down to disentangle his intricacies, and 
clear his obscurities ; but now we tear what we cannot loose, and 
eject what we happen not to understand. 7 

7 I regret that lack of space forbids a longer selection from Johnson's 
" Preface to Shakespeare," which still deserves to be read by every student of 
Shakespeare. : 



XXII. 

EDMUND BURKE. 

(1728-1797.) 

SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 

[Delivered March 22, 1775.] 

These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion 
of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments 
in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly 
captivated. But there is still behind a third consideration con- 
cerning this object, which serves to determine my opinion on the 
sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the management of 
America, even more than its population and its commerce, I 
mean its temper and character. 

In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the 
predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole ; 
and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your Colonies 
become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see 
the least attempt to wrest from them by force or shuffle from them 
by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. 
This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English Colonies 
probably than in any other people of the earth ; and this from a 
great variety of powerful causes ; which to understand the true 
temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it 
will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. 

First, the people of the Colonies are descendants of Englishmen. 
England, Sir, is a nation which still I hope respects, and formerly 
adored, her freedom. The Colonists emigrated from you when 

453 



454 EDMUND BURKE. 

this part of your character was most predominant ; and they took 
this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. 
They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty 
according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract 
liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty 
inheres in some sensible object ; and every nation has formed to 
itself some favourite point, which by way of eminence becomes 
the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, Sir, that 
the great contests for freedom in this country were from the ear- 
liest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the con- 
tests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right 
of election of magistrates ; or on the balance among the several 
orders of the State. The question of money was not with them so 
immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of 
taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exer- 
cised ; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to 
give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this 
point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument de- 
fended the excellence of the English Constitution to insist on this 
privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove 
that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and 
blind usage to reside in a certain body called a House of Com- 
mons. They went much farther ; they attempted to prove, and 
they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the partic- 
ular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate represen- 
tative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this 
oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a funda- 
mental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect 
themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of 
granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. 
The Colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas 
and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and 
attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe, 
or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their 
being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse ; and as 






CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 455 

they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I 
do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your 
general arguments to their own cause. It is not easy indeed to 
make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that 
they did thus apply those general arguments ; and your mode of 
governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through 
wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, 
as well as you, had an interest in these common principles. 

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form 
of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are 
popular in a high degree ; some are merely T popular ; in all, the 
popular representative is the most weighty ; and this share of the 
people in their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with 
lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from 2 whatever tends 
to deprive them of their chief importance. 

If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form 
of government, religion would have given it a complete effect. 
Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no 
way worn out or impaired ; and their mode of professing it is also 
one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants ; 
and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submis- 
sion of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favour- 
able to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that the 
reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches, from all that 
looks like absolute government, is so much to be sought in their 
religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows that the 
Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the gov- 
ernments where it prevails ; that it has generally gone hand in 
hand with them, and received great favour and every kind of sup- 
port from authority. The Church of England too was formed 
from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government. 
But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition 
to all the ordinary powers of the world ; and could justify that 
opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very 

1 entirely. 2 correct, but now regarded as archaic. 



456 EDMUND BURKE. 

existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of 
that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is 
a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our Northern 
Colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance ; it is the 
dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant 
religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing 
in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is pre- 
dominant in most of the Northern provinces, where the Church of 
England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than 
a sort of private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of 
the people. The Colonists left England when this spirit was high, 
and in the emigrants was the highest of all, and even that stream 
of foreigners, which has been constantly flowing into these Colo- 
nies, has, for the greatest part, been composed of dissenters from 
the establishments of their several countries, and have brought 
with them a temper and character far from alien to that of the 
people with whom they mixed. 

Sir, I can perceive by their manner, that some gentlemen object 
to the latitude of this description, because in the Southern Colo- 
nies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular 
establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a cir- 
cumstance attending these Colonies, which, in my opinion, fully 
counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty 
still more high and haughty than in those to the Northward. It is, 
that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of 
slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who 
are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. 
Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank 
and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries 
where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the 
air, 3 may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with 
all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like 
something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to 
commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at 
3 Macbeth, III. 4. — Payne. 



CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 457 

least as much pride as virtue in it ; but I cannot alter the nature 
of man. The fact is so ; and these people of the Southern Colo- 
nies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stub- 
born spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the Northward. Such 
were all the ancient commonwealths ; such were our Gothick 
ancestors ; such in our days were the Poles ; and such will be 
all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves. In such a 
people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of 
freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. 

Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies, 
which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of 
this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country 
perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession 
itself is numerous and powerful ; and in most provinces it takes 
the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Con- 
gress were lawyers. But all who read (and most do read), en- 
deavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been 
told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, 
after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on 
the law exported to the plantations. The Colonists have now 
fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear 
that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries 
in America as in England. General Gage marks out this dispo- 
sition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that 
all the people in his Government are lawyers, or smatterers in 
law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful 
chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal 
constitutions. The smartness of debate will say that this knowl- 
edge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, 
their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All 
this is mighty 4 well. But my honourable and learned friend 5 on 
the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, 
will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when 
great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowl- 
i Now colloquial. 5 The Attorney-General (Thurlow). — Payne. 



45S EDMUND BURKE. 

edge to the service of the State, it is a formidable adversary to 
Government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these 
happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in 
mores!' This studv renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, 
prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other 
countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, 
judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual griev- 
ance ; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of 
the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur mis- 
government at a distance ; and snuff the approach of tyranny in 
every tainted breeze. 

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the Colonies is hardly 
less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep 
in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of 
ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent 
the effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll, 
and months pass, between the order and the execution ; and the 
want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat 
a whole system. You have, indeed, " winged ministers of ven- 
geance," who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest 
verge of the sea. 7 But there a power steps in, that limits the arro- 
gance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, " So far 
shalt thou go, and no farther." 8 Who are you, that you should fret 
and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? — nothing worse happens 
to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire ; and it 
happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown. In 
large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the 
extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt, 
and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he governs Thrace ; nor has he the 
same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and 

6 Studies pass into character. — Ovid, Heroides, Epistle XV. 83. The quo- 
tation is evidently adopted from Bacon's Essay " Of Studies." — Payne. 

7 Payne refers to Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 170, and III. 229, as well as 
to Horace, Odes, IV. 1. 

8 Job xxxviii. 1 1 . 



CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 459 

Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The 
Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose 
rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole of the force and 
vigour of his authority in his centre is derived from a prudent 
relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her provinces, is perhaps 
not so well obeyed as you are in yours. She complies too ; she 
submits • she watches times. This is the immutable condition, 
the eternal law, of extensive and detached empire. 9 

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources ; of descent ; of form 
of government • of religion in the northern provinces ; of manners 
in the southern ; of education ; of the remoteness of situation from 
the first mover of government; from all these causes a fierce 
spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of 
the people in your Colonies, and increased with the increase of 
their wealth ; a spirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercise 
of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcileable to 
any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame 
that is ready to consume us. 

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or 
the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth and 
accommodating spirit of freedom in them would be more accept- 
able to us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired more 
reconcileable with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps 
we might wish the Colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is 
more secure when held in trust for them by us (as their guardians 
during a perpetual minority) than with any part of it in their own 
hands. The question is, not whether their spirit deserves praise 
or blame, but what, in the name of God, shall we do with it? 
You have before you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, 
with all its imperfections on its head. You see the magnitude, 
the importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. By all 
these considerations we are strongly urged to determine something 
concerning it. We are called upon to fix some rule and line for 

9 Payne thinks that Burke generalizes from two bad instances, Spain and 
Turkey; that it is otherwise with England and Russia. 



460 EDMUND BURKE. 

our future conduct, which may give a little stability to our politics, 
and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as the pres- 
ent. Every such return will bring the matter before us in a still 
more untrac table form. For, what astonishing and incredible 
things have we not seen already ! What monsters have not been 
generated from this unnatural contention ! Whilst every principle 
of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as 
far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in 
reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. Until very 
lately, all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an 
emanation from yours. Even the popular part of the Colony Con- 
stitution derived all its activity, and its first vital movement, from 
the pleasure of the Crown. We thought, Sir, that the utmost 
which the discontented Colonists could do was to disturb author- 
ity ; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it ; knowing 
in general what an operose business it is to establish a government 
absolutely new. But having, for our purposes in this contention, 
resolved that none but an obedient assembly should sit ; the 
humours of the people there finding all passage through the legal 
channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way. 
Some provinces have tried their experiment, as we have tried 
ours ; and theirs has succeeded. They have formed a government 
sufficient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution, or 
the troublesome formality of an election. Evident necessity and 
tacit consent have done the business in an instant. So well they 
have done it, that Lord Dunmore 10 — the account is among the 
fragments on your table — tells you that the new institution is 
infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government ever was in 
its most fortunate periods. Obedience is what makes govern- 
ment, and not the names by which it is called ; not the name of 
Governor, as formerly, or Committee, as at present. This new 

10 Lord Dunmore fled from Williamsburg, Virginia, thus abdicating his 
authority, June 8, 1775, and the Convention that met in July appointed the 
famous Committee of Safety, which governed the State until Patrick Henry 
became Governor in July, 1776. 



CONCILIA TION WITH AMERICA. 461 

government has originated directly from the people ; and was not 
transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a pos- 
itive constitution. It was not a manufacture ready formed, and 
transmitted to them in that condition from England. The evil 
arising from hence is this, that the Colonists having once found 
the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst 
of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not henceforward seem 
so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they had 
appeared before the trial. 

Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial of the exer- 
cise of government to still greater lengths, we wholly abrogated 
the ancient government of Massachusetts. We were confident 
that the first feeling, if not the very prospect of anarchy, would 
instantly enforce a complete submission. The experiment was 
tried. A new, strange, unexpected phase of things appeared. 
Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, 
and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigour, for 
near a twelvemonth, without Governor, without public council, 
without judges, without executive magistrates. How long it will 
continue in this state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of 
situation, how can the wisest of us conjecture? Our late experi- 
ence has taught us that many of those fundamental principles 
formerly believed infallible, are either not of the importance they 
were imagined to be j or that we have not at all adverted to some 
other far more important and far more powerful principles, which 
entirely overrule those we had considered as omnipotent. I am 
much against any further experiments, which tend to put to the 
proof any more of these allowed opinions, which contribute so 
much to the public tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at 
home by this loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all estab- 
lished opinions, as we do abroad. For, in order to prove that the 
Americans have no right to their liberties, we are every day en- 
deavouring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit 
of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, 
we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we 



462 EDMUND BURKE. 

never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in debate, with* 
out attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those 
feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood. 

But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I 
do not mean to preclude the fullest inquiry. Far from it. Far 
from deciding on a sudden or partial view, I would patiently go 
round and round the subject, and survey it minutely in every 
possible aspect. Sir, if I were capable of engaging you to an 
equal attention, I would state that, as far as I am capable of dis- 
cerning, there are but three ways of proceeding relative to this 
stubborn spirit, which prevails in your Colonies, and disturbs your 
government. These are : to change that spirit, as inconvenient, 
by removing the causes ; to prosecute it as criminal ; or, to com- 
ply with it as necessary. I would not be guilty of an imperfect 
enumeration ; I can think of but these three. Another has 
indeed been started, that of giving up the Colonies ; but it met so 
slight a reception, that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a 
great while upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like 
the forwardness of peevish children, who, when they cannot get 
all they would have, are resolved to take nothing. 

The first of these plans, to change the spirit as inconvenient, by 
removing the causes, I think is the most like a systematic pro- 
ceeding. It is radical in its principle ; but it is attended with 
great difficulties, some of them little short, as I conceive, of 
impossibilities. This will appear by examining into the plans 
which have been proposed. 

As the growing population in the Colonies is evidently one 
cause of their resistance, it was last session mentioned in both 
Houses, by men of weight, and received not without applause, 
that in order to check this evil, it would be proper for the Crown 
to make no further grants of land. But to this scheme there are 
two objections. The first, that there is already so much unsettled 
land in private hands as to afford room for an immense future 
population, although the Crown not only withheld its grants, but 
annihilated its soil. If this be the case, then the only effect of 



CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 463 

this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a royal wilderness, 
would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands of the 
great private monopolists, without any adequate check to the 
growing and alarming mischief of population. 

But if you stopped your grants, what would be the consequence ? 
The people would occupy without grants. They have already so 
occupied in many places. You cannot station garrisons in every 
part of these deserts. If you drive the people from one place, 
they will carry on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks 
and herds to another. Many of the people in the back settle- 
ments are already little attached to particular situations. Already 
they have topped the Apalachian mountains. From thence they 
behold before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level 
meadow ; a square of five hundred miles. Over this they would 
wander without a possibility of restraint ; they would change their 
manners with the habits of their life ; would soon forget a gov- 
ernment by which they were disowned ; would become hordes of 
English Tartars ; and pouring down upon your unfortified fron- 
tiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your 
Governors and your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, 
and of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and in 
no long time must, be the effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, 
and to suppress as an evil, the command and blessing of Provi- 
dence, " Encrease and Multiply." 11 Such would be the happy 
result of an endeavour to keep, as a lair of wild beasts, that earth 
which God, by an express charter, has given to the children of 
men. Far different, and surely much wiser, has been our policy 
hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every kind of 
bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the husband- 
man to look to authority for his title. We have taught him 
piously to believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. 
We have thrown each tract of land, as it was peopled, into 
districts, that the ruling power should never be wholly out of 

11 Payne refers to Paradise Lost, X. 730, and to the Vulgate version, 
" Crescite et mulHplicamini." 



464 EDMUND BURKE. 

sight. We have settled all we could ; and we have carefully 
attended every settlement with government. 

Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the reasons 
I have just given, I think this new project of hedging-in popula- 
tion to be neither prudent nor practicable. 

To impoverish the Colonies in general, and in particular to 
arrest the noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a 
more easy task. I freely confess it. We have shown a disposition 
to a system of this kind ; a disposition even to continue the re- 
straint after the offence ; looking on ourselves as rivals to our 
Colonies, and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they 
shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The power 
inadequate to all other things is often more than sufficient for 
this. I do not look on the direct and immediate power of the 
Colonies to resist our violence as very formidable. In this, how- 
ever, I may be mistaken. But when I consider that we have 
Colonies for no purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my 
poor understanding a little preposterous to make them unservice- 
able, in order to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing 
more than the old, and, as I thought, exploded problem of tyr- 
anny, which proposes to beggar its subjects into submission. But 
remember, when you have completed your system of impover- 
ishment, that Nature still proceeds in her ordinary course ; that 
discontent will increase with misery; and that there are critical 
moments in the fortune of all States, when they who are too weak 
to contribute to your prosperity may be strong enough to complete 
your ruin. Spoliatis arma supersunt}' 1 

The temper and character which prevail in our Colonies, are, 
I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, 
falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that 
they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of 
freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you 
tell them this tale would detect the imposition : your speech would 

12 Arms remain to the despoiled. — Juvenal, Satires, VIII. 124. 



CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 465 

betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to 
argue another Englishman into slavery. 

I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their repub- 
lican religion as their free descent ; or to substitute the Roman 
Catholic, as a penalty j or the Church of England, as an improve- 
ment. The mode of inquisition and dragooning is going out of 
fashion in the Old World, and I should not confide much to their 
efficacy in the New. The education of the Americans is also on 
the same unalterable bottom with their religion. You cannot per- 
suade them to burn their books of curious science \ to banish their 
lawyers from their courts of laws ; or to quench the lights of their 
assemblies, by refusing to choose those persons who are best read 
in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of 
wholly annihilating the popular assemblies, in which these lawyers 
sit. The army, by which we must govern in their place, would be 
far more chargeable 13 to us ; not quite so effectual ; and perhaps, 
in the end, full as difficult to be kept in obedience. 

With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the 
Southern Colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce it, by 
declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. This project 
has had its advocates and panegyrists ; yet I never could argue 
myself into any opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to 
their masters. A general wild offer of liberty would not always be 
accepted. History furnishes few instances of it. It is sometimes 
as hard to persuade slaves to be free, as it is to compel freemen 
to be slaves ; and in this auspicious scheme we should have both 
these pleasing tasks on our hands at once. But when we talk of 
enfranchisement, do we not perceive that the American master 
may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in defence of freedom ? 
A measure to which other people have had recourse more than 
once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of their 
affairs. 

Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men 
are trom slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom 



466 EDMUND BURKE. 

from that very nation which has sold them to their present mas- 
ters ? from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those 
masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic. 
An offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly, 
shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry 
into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hun- 
dred Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea 
captain attempting at the same instant to publish his proclamation 
of liberty, and to advertise his sale of slaves. 

But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The 
ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry ; and as long as it 
continues in its present bed, so long all the causes which weaken 
authority by distance will continue. "Ye gods, annihilate but 
space and time, and make two lovers happy ! " 14 was a pious and 
passionate prayer ; but just as reasonable as many of the serious 
wishes of very grave and solemn politicians. 

If then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any alterna- 
tive course for changing the moral causes, and not quite easy to 
remove the natural, which produce prejudices irreconcileable to 
the late exercise of our authority, but that the spirit infallibly will 
continue ; and, continuing, will produce such effects as now em- 
barrass us ; the second mode under consideration is to prosecute 
that spirit in its overt acts as criminal. 

At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems 
a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should 
seem to my way of conceiving such matters, that there is a very 
wide difference in reason and policy between the mode of pro- 
ceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or even 
of bands of men, who disturb order within the State, and the civil 
dissensions which may, from time to time, on great questions, agi- 
tate the several communities which compose a great empire. It 
looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary 

14 This piece of fustian is taken from Martinus Scriblerus, Of the Art of 
Sinking in Poetry, where it is cited without name. It is said to come from one 
of Dryden's plays. — Payne. 



CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 467 

ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not 
know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole 
people. 15 I cannot insult and ridicule the feelings of millions of 
my fellow-creatures, as Sir Edward Coke insulted one excellent 
individual (Sir Walter Rawleigh) at the bar. I hope I am not 
ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, entrusted with 
magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged with the 
safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title that I am. 
I really think that, for wise men, this is not judicious ; for sober 
men, not decent ; for minds tinctured with humanity, not mild and 
merciful. 

Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire, as distin- 
guished from a single State or kingdom. But my idea of it is this : 
that an empire is the aggregate of many States under one common 
head ; whether this head be a monarch, or a presiding republic. 
It does, in such constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but 
the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its 
happening) that the subordinate parts have many local privileges 
and immunities. Between these privileges and the supreme 
common authority the line may be extremely nice. Of course, 
disputes, often, too, very bitter disputes, and much ill blood, will 
arise. But though every privilege is an exemption (in the case) 
from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it is no denial 
of it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi termini™ to 
imply a superior power. For to talk of the privileges of a State, 
or of a person, who has no superior, is hardly any better than 
speaking nonsense. Now, in such unfortunate quarrels among 
the component parts of a great political union of communities, I 
can scarcely conceive anything more completely imprudent than 
for the head of the empire to insist that, if any privilege is pleaded 
against his will, or his acts, his whole authority is denied ; instantly 
to proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending 
provinces under the ban. Will not this, Sir, very soon teach the 

15 A sentence that has passed into the literature of English-speaking people. 

16 from the force {or meaning) of the expression. 



468 EDMUND BURKE. 



provinces to make no distinctions on their part ? Will it not teach 
them that the Government, against which a claim of liberty is tan- 
tamount to high treason, is a Government to which submission is 
equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite convenient to 
impress dependent communities with such an idea. 

We are indeed, in all disputes with the Colonies, by the neces- 
sity of things, the judge. It is true, Sir. But I confess that the 
character of judge in my own cause is a thing that frightens me. 
Instead of filling me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. 
I cannot proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until I 
find myself in something more like a judicial character. I must 
have these hesitations as long as I am compelled to recollect that, 
in my little reading upon such contests as these, the sense of man- 
kind has, at least, as often decided against the superior as the sub- 
ordinate power. Sir, let me add too, that the opinion of my 
having some abstract right in my favour would not put me much 
at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that there 
were no rights which, in their exercise under certain circumstances, 
were not the most odious of all wrongs, and the most vexatious 
of all injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight with 
me, when I find things so circumstanced, that I see the same 
party at once a civil litigant against me in point of right ; and a 
culprit before me, while I sit as a criminal judge on acts of his, 
whose moral quality is to be decided upon the merits of that very 
litigation. Men are every now and then put, by the complexity 
of human affairs, into strange situations ; but justice is the same, 
let the judge be in what situation he will. 

There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this 
mode of criminal proceeding is not (at least in the present stage 
of our contest) altogether expedient ; which is nothing less than 
the conduct of those very persons who have seemed to adopt that 
mode, by lately declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay, as 
they had formerly addressed to have traitors brought hither, under 
an Act of Henry the Eighth, for trial. For though rebellion is 
declared, it is not proceeded against as such ; nor have any steps 






CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 469 

been taken towards the apprehension or conviction of any indi- 
vidual offender, either on our late or our former Address ; but 
modes of public coercion have been adopted, and such as 'have 
much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility towards an 
independent power than the punishment of rebellious subjects. 
All this seems rather inconsistent ; but it shows how difficult it is 
to apply these juridical ideas to our present case. 

In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. What is it 
we have got by all our menaces, which have been many and fero- 
cious? What advantage have we derived from the penal laws we 
have rightly passed, and which, for the time, have been severe 
and numerous ? What advances have we made towards our object 
by the sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemp- 
tible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing less. When 
I see things in this situation, after such confident hopes, bold 
promises, and active exertions, I cannot for my life avoid a sus- 
picion that the plan itself is not correctly right. 

If then the removal of the causes of this spirit of American 
liberty be, for the greater part, or rather entirely, impracticable ; 
if the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable, or if applicable, 
are in the highest degree inexpedient; what way yet remains? 
No way is open but the third and last — to comply with the Amer- 
ican spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to submit to it as a 
necessary evil. 

If we adopt this mode ; if we mean to conciliate and concede ; 
let us see of what nature the concession ought to be : to ascertain 
the nature of our concession we must look at their complaint. 
The Colonies complain that they have not the characteristic mark 
and seal of British freedom. They complain that they are taxed 
in a Parliament in which they are not represented. If you mean 
to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with regard to this 
complaint. If you mean to please any people, you must give 
them the boon which they ask • not what you may think better for 
them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act may be a wise 
regulation, but it is no concession ; whereas our present theme is 
the mode of giving satisfaction. 



470 EDMUND BURKE. 

Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this day to 
have nothing at all to do with the question of the right of taxa- 
tion. Some gentlemen startle — but it is true; I put it totally 
out of the question. It is less than nothing in my consideration. 
I do not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen of 
profound learning are fond of displaying it on this profound 
subject. But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly 
limited to the policy of the question. I do not examine whether 
the giving away a man's money be a power excepted and reserved 
out of the general trust of government ; and how far all man- 
kind, in all forms of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that 
right by the charter of Nature. Or whether, on the contrary, a 
right of taxation is necessarily involved in the general principle 
of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. 
These are deep questions, where great names militate against each 
other ; where reason is perplexed ; and an appeal to authorities 
only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend authorities 
lift up their heads on both sides ; and there is no sure footing in 
the middle. This point " is the great Serbonian bog, Betwixt 
Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk." 17 
I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such 
respectable company. The question with me is, not whether you 
have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not 
your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells 
me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I 
ought to do. Is a politic act the worse for being a generous one ? 
Is no concession proper, but that which is made from your want 
of right to keep what you grant ? Or does it lessen the grace or 
dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you 
have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed 
with arms to enforce them ? What signify all those titles and all 
those arms? Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing 
tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit ; and 
that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own 
weapons ? 

17 Paradise Lost, II. 592. 



CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. 471 

Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of 
keeping up the concord of this empire by a unity of spirit, though 
in a diversity of operations, that, if I were sure the Colonists had, 
at their leaving this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude ; 
that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens ; that they 
had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and 
their posterity to all generations ; yet I should hold myself obliged 
to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own 
day, and to govern two million of men, impatient of servitude, on 
the principles of freedom. I am not determining a point of law ; 
I am restoring tranquillity ; and the general character and situa- 
tion of a people must determine what sort of government is fitted 
for them. That point nothing else can or ought to determine. 

My idea, therefore, without considering whether we yield as 
matter of right, or grant as matter of favour, is to admit the peo- 
ple of our Colonies into an interest in the Constitution ; and, by 
recording that admission in the Journals of Parliament, to give 
them as strong an assurance as the nature of the thing will admit, 
that we mean for ever to adhere to that solemn declaration of 
systematic indulgence. 

Some years ago, the repeal of a Revenue Act, upon its under- 
stood principle, might have served to show that we intended an 
unconditional abatement of the exercise of a taxing power. Such 
a measure was then sufficient to remove all suspicion, and to give 
perfect content. But unfortunate events, since that time, may 
make something further necessary j and not more necessary for 
the satisfaction of the Colonies, than for the dignity and con- 
sistency of our own future proceedings. 



XXIII. 

EDWARD GIBBON. 

(1737-1794.) 

fEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 



[Written in 1788.] 

A traveller, who visits Oxford or Cambridge, is surprised and 
edified by the apparent order and tranquillity that prevail in the 
seats of the English muses. In the most celebrated universities 
of Holland, Germany, and Italy, the students, who swarm from 
different countries, are loosely dispersed in private lodgings at the 
houses of the burghers : they dress according to their fancy and 
fortune ; and in the intemperate quarrels of youth and wine, their 
swords, though less frequently than of old, are sometimes stained 
with each other's blood. The use of arms is banished from our 
English universities ; the uniform habit of the academics, the 
square cap, and black gown, is adapted to the civil and even 
clerical profession : and from the doctor in divinity to the under- 
graduate, the degrees of learning and age are externally distin- 
guished. Instead of being scattered in a town, the students of 
Oxford and Cambridge are united in colleges ; their maintenance 
is provided at their own expense, or that of the founders ; and the 
stated hours of the hall and chapel represent the discipline of a 
regular, and, as it were, a religious community. The eyes of the 
traveller are attracted by the size or beauty of the public edifices ; 
and the principal colleges appear to be so many palaces, which a 
liberal nation has erected and endowed for the habitation of 
science. My own introduction to the university of Oxford forms 
472 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 473 

a new aera in my life ; and at the distance of forty years I still 
remember my first emotions of surprise and satisfaction. In my 
fifteenth year I felt myself suddenly raised from a boy to a man ; 
the persons whom I respected as my superiors in age and aca- 
demical rank, entertained me with every mark of attention and 
civility ; and my vanity was flattered by the velvet cap and silk 
gown, which distinguish a gentleman commoner from a plebeian 
student. A decent allowance, more money than a schoolboy had 
ever seen, was at my own disposal ; and I might command, among 
the tradesmen of Oxford, an indefinite and dangerous latitude of 
credit. A key was delivered into my hands, which gave me the free 
use of a numerous and learned library ; my apartment consisted 
of three elegant and well- furnished rooms in the new building, a 
stately pile, of Magdalen College ; and the adjacent walks, had 
they been .frequented by Plato's disciples, might have been com- 
pared to the Attic shade on the banks of the Ilissus. Such was 
the fair prospect of my entrance (April 3, 1752) into the univer- 
sity of Oxford. 

A venerable prelate, whose taste and erudition must reflect 
honour on the society in which they were formed, has drawn a 
very interesting picture of his academical life. — "I was educated 
(says Bishop Lowth) in the university of Oxford. I enjoyed all 
the advantages, both public and private, which that famous seat 
of learning so largely affords. I spent many years in that illus- 
trious society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and 
studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce l of gentle- 
men and of scholars ; in a society where emulation without envy, 
ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited 
industry, and awakened genius ; where a liberal pursuit of knowl- 
edge, and a genuine freedom of thought, were raised, encouraged, 
and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by au- 
thority. I breathed the same atmosphere that the Hookers, the 
Chillixgworths, and the Lockes had breathed before ; whose 
benevolence and humanity were as extensive as their vast genius 

1 intercourse. 



474 EDWARD GIBBON. 

and comprehensive knowledge ; who always treated their adver- 
saries with civility and respect ; who made candour, moderation, 
and liberal judgment as much the rule and law as the subject of 
their discourse. And do you reproach me with my education in 
this place, and with my relation to this most respectable body, 
which J shall always esteem my greatest advantage and my high- 
est honour?." I transcribe with pleasure this eloquent passage, 
without examining what benefits or what rewards were derived by 
Hooker, or Chillingworth, or Locke, from their academical insti- 
tution ; without inquiring, whether in this angry controversy the 
spirit of Lowth himself is purified from the intolerant zeal, which 
Warburton had ascribed to the genius of the place. It may in- 
deed be observed, that the atmosphere of Oxford did not agree 
with Mr. Locke's constitution; and that the philosopher justly 
despised the academical bigots, who expelled his person and con- 
demned his principles. The expression of gratitude is a virtue 
and a pleasure : a liberal mind will delight to cherish and cele- 
brate the memory of its parents ; and the teachers of science are 
the parents of the mind. I applaud the filial piety, which it is 
impossible for me to imitate ; since I must not confess an imagi- 
nary debt, to assume the merit of a just or generous retribution. 
To the university of Oxford / acknowledge no obligation ; and she 
will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to dis- 
claim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen 
College ; they proved the fourteen months the most idle and un- 
profitable of my whole life : the reader will pronounce between 
the school and the scholar; but I cannot affect to believe that 
Nature had disqualified me for all literary pursuits. The spacious 
and ready excuse of my tender age, imperfect preparation, and 
hasty departure, may doubtless be alleged ; nor do I wish to de- 
fraud such excuses of their proper weight. Yet in my sixteenth 
year I was not devoid of capacity or application ; even my child- 
ish reading had displayed an early though blind propensity for 
books ; and the shallow flood might have been taught to flow in 
a deep channel and a clear stream. In the discipline of a well- 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 475 

constituted academy, under the guidance of skilful and vigilant 
professors, I should gradually have risen from translations to origi- 
nals, from the Latin to the Greek classics, from dead languages to 
living science : my hours would have been occupied by useful and 
agreeable studies, the wanderings of fancy would have been re- 
strained, and I should have escaped the temptations of idleness, 
which finally precipitated my departure from Oxford. 

Perhaps in a separate annotation I may coolly examine the 
fabulous and real antiquities of our sister universities, a question 
which has kindled such fierce and foolish disputes among their 
fanatic sons. In the meanwhile it will be acknowledged that 
these venerable bodies are sufficiently old to partake of all the 
prejudices and infirmities of age. The schools of Oxford and 
Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous 
science ; and they are still tainted with the vices of their origin. 
Their primitive discipline was adapted to the education of priests 
and monks ; and the government still remains in the hands of the 
clergy, an order of men whose manners are remote from the pres- 
ent world, and whose eyes are dazzled by the light of philosophy. 
The legal incorporation of these societies by the charters of popes 
and kings had given them a monopoly of the public instruction ; 
and the spirit of monopolists is narrow, lazy, and oppressive ; 
their work is more costly and less productive than that of inde- 
pendent artists ; and the new improvements so eagerly grasped 
by the competition of freedom, are admitted with slow and sullen 
reluctance in those proud corporations, above the fear of a rival, 
and below the confession of an error. We may scarcely hope that 
any reformation will be a voluntary act ; and so deeply are they 
rooted in law and prejudice, that even the omnipotence of parlia- 
ment would shrink from an inquiry into the state and abuses of 
the two universities. 2 

The use of academical degrees, as old as the thirteenth century, 

2 We must remember that Gibbon was writing in 1788. Parliament has 
appointed University Commissions, and there have been many reforms at these 
great centres of learning. 



476 EDWARD GIB BOM. 

is visibly borrowed from the mechanic corporations ; in which an 
apprentice, after serving his time, obtains a testimonial of his skill, 
and a licence to practise his trade and mystery. 3 It is not my 
design to depreciate those honours, which could never gratify or 
disappoint my ambition ; and I should applaud the institution, if 
the degrees of bachelor or licentiate were bestowed as the reward 
of manly and successful study : if the name and rank of doctor or 
master were strictly reserved for the professors of science, who 
have approved their title to the public esteem. 

In all the universities of Europe, excepting our own, the lan- 
guages and sciences are distributed among a numerous list of 
effective professors : the students, according to their taste, their 
calling, and their diligence, apply themselves to the proper mas- 
ters ; and in the annual repetition of public and private lectures, 
these masters are assiduously employed. Our curiosity may in- 
quire what number of professors has been instituted at Oxford ? 
(for I shall now confine myself to my own university ;) by whom 
are they appointed, and what may be the probable chances of 
merit or incapacity ; how many are stationed to the three facul- 
ties, and how many are left for the liberal arts ? what is the form, 
and what the substance, of their lessons ? But all these questions 
are silenced by one short and singular answer, " That in the uni- 
versity of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have 
for these many years given up altogether even the pretence of 
teaching." Incredible as the fact may appear, I must rest my 
belief on the positive and impartial evidence of a master of moral 
and political wisdom, who had himself resided at Oxford. Dr. 
Adam Smith assigns as the cause of their indolence, that, instead 
of being paid by voluntary contributions, which would urge them 
to increase the number, and to deserve the gratitude of their 
pupils, the Oxford professors are secure in the enjoyment of a 
fixed stipend, without the necessity of labour, or the apprehension 
of controul. It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation 
absurd, that excepting in experimental sciences, which demand a 

3 calling, or occupation. 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 477 

costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many valuable trea- 
tises that have been published on every subject of learning, may 
now supersede the ancient mode of oral instruction. Were this 
principle true in its utmost latitude, I should only infer that the 
offices and salaries, which are become useless, ought without delay 
to be abolished. But there still remains a material difference 
between a book and a professor ; the hour of the lecture enforces 
attendance ; attention is fixed by the presence, the voice, and the 
occasional questions of the teacher ; the most idle will carry some- 
thing away ; and the more diligent will compare the instructions, 
which they have heard in the school, with the volumes, which they 
peruse in their chamber. The advice of a skilful professor will 
adapt a course of reading to every mind and every situation ; his 
authority will discover, admonish, and at last chastise the negli- 
gence of his disciples ; and his vigilant inquiries will ascertain the 
steps of their literary progress. Whatever science he professes he 
may illustrate in a series of discourses, composed in the leisure of 
his closet, pronounced on public occasions, and finally delivered 
to the press. I observe with pleasure, that in the university of 
Oxford Dr. Lowth, with equal eloquence and erudition, has exe- 
cuted this task in his incomparable Preelections on the Poetry of 
the Hebrews. 

The college of St. Mary Magdalen was founded in the fifteenth 
century by Wainfleet, bishop of Winchester ; and now consists of 
a president, forty fellows, and a number of inferior students. It is 
esteemed one of the largest and most wealthy of our academical 
corporations, which may be compared to the Benedictine abbeys 
of Catholic countries ; and I have loosely heard that the estates 
belonging to Magdalen College, which are leased by those indul- 
gent landlords at small quit-rents and occasional fines, might be 
raised, in the hands of private avarice, to an annual revenue of 
nearly thirty thousand pounds. Our colleges are supposed to be 
schools of science, as well as of education ; nor is it unreasonable 
to expect that a body of literary men, devoted to a life of celibacy, 
exempt from the care of their own subsistence, and amply pro- 



478 EDWARD GIBBON. 

vided with books, should devote their leisure to the prosecution of 
study, and that some effects of their studies should be manifested 
to the world. The shelves of their library groan under the weight 
of the Benedictine folios, of the editions of the fathers, and the 
collections of the middle ages, which have issued from the single 
abbey of St. Germain de Pr£z at Paris. A composition of genius 
must be the offspring of one mind ; but such works of industry, 
as may be divided among many hands, and must be continued 
during many years, are the peculiar province of a laborious com- 
munity. If I inquire into the manufactures of the monks of Mag- 
dalen, if I extend the inquiry to the other colleges of Oxford and 
Cambridge, a silent blush, or a scornful frown, will be the only 
reply. The fellows or monks of my time were decent easy men, 
who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder ; their days were 
filled by a series of uniform employments ; the chapel and the 
hall, the coffee-house and the common room, till they retired, 
weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of 
reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their con- 
science ; and the first shoots of learning and ingenuity withered 
on the ground, without yielding any fruits to the owners or the 
public. As a gentleman commoner, I was admitted to the soci- 
ety of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of 
literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their 
discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college 
business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal : 
their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of 
youth ; and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the 
most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover. A general election 
was now approaching : the great Oxfordshire contest already 
blazed with all the malevolence of party-zeal. Magdalen College 
was devoutly attached to the old interest ! and the names of 
Wenman and Dashwood were more frequently pronounced, than 
those of Cicero and Chrysostom. The example of the senior 
fellows could not inspire the under-graduates with a liberal spirit 
or studious emulation ; and I cannot describe, as I never knew, 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 479 

the discipline of college. Some duties may possibly have been 
imposed on the poor scholars, whose ambition aspired to the 
peaceful honours of a fellowship (ascribi quietis ordinibus . . . 
Deoru??i); < but no independent members were admitted below 
the rank of a gentleman commoner, and our velvet cap was the 
cap of liberty. A tradition prevailed that some of our predeces- 
sors had spoken Latin declamations in the hall ; but of this 
ancient custom no vestige remained : the obvious methods of 
public exercises and examinations were totally unknown ; and I 
have never heard that either the president or the society inter- 
fered in the private economy of the tutors and their pupils. 

The silence of the Oxford professors, which deprives the youth 
of public instruction, is imperfectly supplied by the tutors, as they 
are styled, of the several colleges. Instead of confining them- 
selves to a single science, which had satisfied the ambition of 
Burman or Bernoulli, they teach, or promise to teach, either his- 
tory or mathematics, or ancient literature, or moral philosophy ; 
and as it is possible that they may be defective in all, it is highly 
probable that of some they will be ignorant. They are paid, 
indeed, by voluntary contributions ; but their appointment de- 
pends on the head of the house : their diligence is voluntary, and 
will consequently be languid, while the pupils themselves, or their 
parents, are not indulged in the liberty of choice or change. The 
first tutor into whose hands I was resigned appears to have been 
one of the best of the tribe : Dr. Waldegrave was a learned and 
pious man, of a mild disposition, strict morals, and abstemious life, 
who seldom mingled in the politics or the jollity of the college. 
But his knowledge of the world was confined to the university ; 
his learning was of the last, rather than the present age ; his tem- 
per was indolent ; his faculties, which were not of the first rate, 
had been relaxed by the climate, and he was satisfied, like his 
fellows, with the slight and superficial discharge of an important 
trust. As soon as my tutor had sounded the insufficiency of his 

4 to be enrolled in the quiet orders of the gods. — HORACE, Odes, III. 
3. 35-6- 



480 EDWARD GIB BOA 7 . 

pupil in school- learning, he proposed that we should read every 
morning from ten to eleven the comedies of Terence. The sum 
of my improvement in the university of Oxford is confined to 
three or four Latin plays ; and even the study of an elegant classic, 
which might have been illustrated by a comparison of ancient and 
modern theatres, was reduced to a dry and literal interpretation of 
the author's text. During the first weeks I constantly attended 
these lessons in my tutor's room ; but as they appeared equally 
devoid of profit and pleasure I was once tempted to try the exper- 
iment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with a 
smile. I repeated the offence with less ceremony; the excuse 
was admitted with the same indulgence : the slightest motive of 
laziness or indisposition, the most trifling avocation at home or 
abroad, was allowed as a worthy impediment ; nor did my tutor 
appear conscious of my absence or neglect. Had the hour of lec- 
ture been constantly filled, a single hour was a small portion of 
my academic leisure. No plan of study was recommended for 
my use ; no exercises were prescribed for his inspection ; and, at 
the most precious season of youth, whole days and weeks were 
suffered to elapse without labour or amusement, without advice or 
account. I should have listened to the voice of reason and of my 
tutor ; his mild behaviour had gained my confidence. I pre- 
ferred his society to that of the younger students ; and in our 
evening walks to the top of Heddington-hill, we freely conversed 
on a variety of subjects. Since the days of Pocock and Hyde, 
Oriental learning has always been the pride of Oxford, and I once 
expressed an inclination to study Arabic. His prudence discour- 
aged this childish fancy ; but he neglected the fair occasion of 
directing the ardour of a curious mind. During my absence in 
the summer vacation, Dr. Waldegrave accepted a college living at 
Washington in Sussex, and on my return I no longer found him at 
Oxford. From that time I have lost sight of my first tutor ; but 
at the end of thirty years (1781) he was still alive ; and the prac- 
tice of exercise and temperance had entitled him to a healthy 
old age. 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 481 

The long recess between the Trinity and Michaelmas terms 
empties the colleges of Oxford, as well as the courts of Westmin- 
ster. I spent, at my father's house at Beriton in Hampshire, the 
two months of August and September. It is whimsical enough, 
that as soon as I left Magdalen College, my taste for books began 
to revive ; but it was the same blind and boyish taste for the 
pursuit of exotic history. Unprovided with original learning, 
unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of com- 
position, I resolved — to write a book. The title of this first 
Essay, The Age of Sesostris, was perhaps suggested by Voltaire's 
Age of Lewis XIV. which was new and popular; but my sole 
object was to investigate the probable date of the life and reign of 
the conqueror of Asia. I was then enamoured of Sir John Mar- 
sham's Canon Chronicus, an elaborate work, of whose merits and 
defects I was not yet qualified to judge. According to his spe- 
cious, though narrow plan, I settled my hero about the time of 
Solomon, in the tenth century before the Christian era. It was 
therefore incumbent on me, unless I would adopt % Sir Isaac New- 
ton's shorter chronology, to remove a formidable objection ; and 
my solution, for a youth of fifteen, is not devoid of ingenuity. In 
his version of the Sacred Books, Manetho the high priest has iden- 
tified Sethosis, or Sesostris, with the elder brother of Danaus, who 
landed in Greece, according to the Parian Marble, fifteen hundred 
and ten years before Christ. But in my supposition the high 
priest is guilty of a voluntary error ; flattery is the prolific parent 
of falsehood. Manetho's History of Egypt is dedicated to Ptol- 
emy Philadelphus, who derived a fabulous or illegitimate pedigree 
from the Macedonian kings of the race of Hercules. Danaus is 
the ancestor of Hercules ; and after the failure of the elder branch, 
his descendants, the Ptolemies, are the sole representatives of the 
royal family, and may claim by inheritance the kingdom which 
they hold by conquest. Such were my juvenile discoveries ; at a 
riper age I no longer presume to connect the Greek, the Jewish, 
and the Egyptian antiquities, which are lost in a distant cloud. 
Nor is this the only instance in which the belief and knowledge 



482 EDWARD GIBBON. 

of the child are superseded by the more rational ignorance of the 
man. During my stay at Beriton, my infant-labour was diligently 
prosecuted, without much interruption from company or country 
diversions ; and. I already heard the music of public applause. 
The discovery of my own weakness was the first symptom of taste. 
On my return to Oxford, the Age of Sesostris was wisely relin- 
quished; but the imperfect sheets remained twenty years at the 
bottom of a drawer, till, in a general clearance of papers (Nov., 
1772,) they were committed to the flames. 

After the departure of Dr. Waldegrave, I was transferred, with 
his other pupils, to his academical heir, whose literary character 
did not command the respect of the college. Dr. well re- 
membered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he 
had a duty to perform. Instead of guiding the studies, and watch- 
ing over the behaviour of his disciple, I was never summoned to 
attend even the ceremony of a lecture ; and, excepting one vol- 
untary visit to his rooms, during the eight months of his titular 
office, the tutqr and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to 
each other. The want of experience, of advice, and of occupa- 
tion, soon betrayed me into some improprieties of conduct, ill- 
chosen company, late hours, and inconsiderate expense. My 
growing debts might be secret ; but my frequent absence was vis- 
ible and scandalous : and a tour to Bath, a visit into Buckingham- 
shire, and four excursions to London in the same winter, were 
costly and dangerous frolics. They were, indeed, without a mean- 
ing, as without an excuse. The irksomeness of a cloistered life 
repeatedly tempted me to wander ; but my chief pleasure was 
that of travelling ; and I was too young and bashful to enjoy, like 
a Manly Oxonian in Town, the pleasures of London. In all these 
excursions I eloped from Oxford ; I returned to college ; in a few 
days I eloped again, as if I had been an independent stranger in 
a hired lodging, without once hearing the voice of admonition, 
without once feeling the hand of controul. Yet my time was lost, 
my expenses were multiplied, my behaviour abroad was unknown ; 
folly as well as vice should have awakened the attention of my 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 483 

superiors, and my tender years would have justified a more than 
ordinary degree of restraint and discipline. 

It might at least be expected that an ecclesiastical school 
should inculcate the orthodox principles of religion. But our 
venerable mother had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of 
bigotry and indifference : an heretic, or unbeliever, was a monster 
in her eyes ; but she was always, or often, or sometimes, remiss in 
the spiritual education of her own children. According to the 
statutes of the university, every student, before he is matriculated, 
must subscribe his assent to the thirty-nine articles of the church 
of England, which are signed by more than read, and read by 
more than believe them. My insufficient age excused me, how- 
ever, from the immediate performance of this legal ceremony ; 
and the vice-chancellor directed me to return, as soon as I should 
have accomplished my fifteenth year ; recommending me, in the 
mean while, to the instruction of my college. My college forgot 
to instruct : I forgot to return, and was myself forgotten by the 
first magistrate of the university. Without a single lecture, either 
public or private, either christian or protestant, without any aca- 
demical subscription, without any episcopal confirmation, I was 
left by the dim light of my catechism to grope my way to the 
chapel and communion-table, where I was admitted, without a 
question, how far, or by what means, I might be qualified to re- 
ceive the sacrament. Such almost incredible neglect was produc- 
tive of the worst mischiefs. From my childhood I had been fond 
of religious disputation : my poor aunt had been often puzzled by 
the mysteries which she strove to believe; nor had the elastic 
spring been totally broken by the weight of the atmosphere of 
Oxford. The blind activity of idleness urged me to advance with- 
out armour into the dangerous mazes of controversy ; and at the 
age of sixteen, I bewildered myself in the errors of the church 
of Rome. 5 



5 Gibbon's account of the progress of his conversion is omitted. 



484 EDWARD GIBBON. 

After carrying me to Putney, to the house of his friend Mr. 
Mallet, 6 by whose philosophy I was rather scandalized than re- 
claimed, it was necessary for my father to form a new plan of 
education, and to devise some method which, if possible, might 
effect the cure of my spiritual malady. After much debate it was 
determined, from the advice and personal experience of Mr. Eliot 
(now Lord Eliot) to fix me, during some years, at Lausanne in 
Switzerland. Mr. Frey, a Swiss gentleman of Basil, undertook the 
conduct of the journey : we left London the 19th of June, crossed 
the sea from Dover to Calais, travelled post through several 
provinces of France, by the direct road of St. Quentin, Rheims, 
Langres, and, Besancon, and arrived the 30th of June at Lausanne, 
where I was immediately settled under the roof and tuition of 
Mr. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister. 

The first marks of my father's displeasure rather astonished than 
afflicted me : when he threatened to banish, and disown, and dis- 
inherit a rebellious son, I cherished a secret hope that he would 
not be able or willing to effect his menaces; and the pride of 
conscience encouraged me to sustain the honourable and impor- 
tant part which I was now acting. My spirits were raised and 
kept alive by the rapid motion of my journey, the new and various 
scenes of the Continent, and the civility of Mr. Frey, a man of 
sense, who was not ignorant of books or the world. But after he 
had resigned me into Pavilliard's hands, and I was fixed in my 
new habitation, I had leisure to contemplate the strange and mel- 
ancholy prospect before me. My first complaint arose from my 
ignorance of the language. In my childhood I had once studied 
the French grammar, and I could imperfectly understand the easy 
prose of a familiar subject. But when I was thus suddenly cast on 
a foreign land, I found myself deprived of the use of speech and 
of hearing ; and, during some weeks, incapable not only of enjoy- 
ing the pleasures of conversation, but even of asking or answering 

6 The author of a life of Bacon, which has been rated above its value; of 
some forgotten poems and plays; and of the pathetic ballad of William and 
Margaret. — Gibbon's Note. 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 4S5 

a question in the common intercourse of life. To a home-bred 
Englishman every object, every custom was offensive ; but the 
native of any country might have been disgusted with the general 
aspect of his lodging and entertainment. I had now exchanged 
my elegant apartment in Magdalen College, for a narrow, gloomy 
street, the most unfrequented of an unhandsome town, for an old 
inconvenient house, and for a small chamber ill-contrived and ill- 
furnished, which, on the approach of Winter, instead of a com- 
panionable fire, must be warmed by the dull invisible heat of a 
stove. From a man I was again degraded to the dependence of 
a schoolboy. Mr. Pavilliard managed my expenses, which had 
been reduced to a diminutive state : I received a small monthly 
allowance for my pocket-money ; and helpless and awkward as I 
have ever been, I no longer enjoyed the indispensable comfort of 
a servant. My condition seemed as destitute of hope, as it was 
devoid of pleasure : I was separated for an indefinite, which ap- 
peared an infinite, term from my native country ; and I had lost 
all connexion with my catholic friends. I have since reflected 
with surprise, that, as the Romish clergy of every part of Europe 
maintain a close correspondence with each other, they never 
attempted, by letters or messages, to rescue me from the hands 
of the heretics, or at least to confirm my zeal and constancy 
in the profession of the faith. Such was my first introduction to 
Lausanne ; a place where I spent nearly five years with pleasure 
and profit, which I afterwards revisited without compulsion, and 
which I have finally selected as the most grateful retreat for the 
decline of my life. 

But it is the peculiar felicity of youth that the most unpleasing 
objects and events seldom make a deep or lasting impression ; it 
forgets the past, enjoys the present, and anticipates the future. At 
the flexible age of sixteen I soon learned to endure, and gradually 
to adopt, the new forms of arbitrary manners : the real hardships 
of my situation were alienated by time. Had I been sent abroad 
in a more splendid style, such as the fortune and bounty of my 
father might have supplied, I might have returned home with the 



486 EDWARD GIBBON. 

same stock of language and science, which our countrymen usually 
import from $he Continent. An exile and a prisoner as I was, 
their example betrayed me into some irregularities of wine, of 
play, and of idle excursions : but I soon felt the impossibility of 
associating with them on equal terms ; and after the departure 
of my first acquaintance, I held a cold and civil correspondence 
with their successors. This seclusion from English society was 
attended with the most solid benefits. In the Pays de Vaud, the 
French language is used with less imperfection than in most of 
the distant provinces of France : in Pavilliard's family, necessity 
compelled me to listen and to speak ; and if I was at first dis- 
heartened by the apparent slowness, in a few months I was aston- 
ished by the rapidity of my progress. My pronunciation was 
formed by the constant repetition of the same sounds ; the variety 
of words and idioms, the rules of grammar, and distinctions of 
genders, were impressed in my memory : ease and freedom were 
obtained by practice ; correctness and elegance by labour ; and 
before I was recalled home, French, in which I spontaneously 
thought, was more familiar than English to my ear, my tongue, 
and my pen. The first effect of this opening knowledge was the 
revival of my love of reading, which had been chilled at Oxford ; 
and I soon turned over, without much choice, almost all the 
French books in my tutor's library. Even these amusements were 
productive of real advantage : my taste and judgment were now 
somewhat riper. I was introduced to a new mode of style and 
literature : by the comparison of manners and opinions, my views 
were enlarged, my prejudices were corrected, and a copious vol- 
untary abstract of the Histoire de VEglise et de V Empire, by le 
Sueur, may be placed in a middle line between my childish and 
my manly studies. As soon as I was able to converse with the 
natives, I began to feel some satisfaction in their company : my 
awkward timidity was polished and emboldened ; and I fre- 
quented, for the first time, assemblies of men and women. The 
acquaintance of the Pavilliards prepared me by degrees for more 
elegant society. I was received with kindness and indulgence in 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 487 

the best families of Lausanne ; and it was in one of these that I 
formed an intimate and lasting connection with Mr. Deyverdun, a 
young man of an amiable temper and excellent understanding. 
In the arts of fencing and dancing, small indeed was my pro- 
ficiency * and some months were idly wasted in the riding-school. 
My unfitness to bodily exercise reconciled me to a sedentary life, 
and the horse, the favourite of my countrymen, never contributed 
to the pleasures of my youth. 

My obligations to the lessons of Mr. Pavilliard, gratitude will 
not suffer me to forget : he was endowed with a clear head and a 
warm heart ; his innate benevolence had assuaged the spirit of the 
church ; he was rational, because he was moderate : in the course 
of his studies he had acquired a just though superficial knowledge 
of most branches of literature ; by long practice, he was skilled in 
the arts of teaching ; and he laboured with assiduous patience to 
know the character, gain the affection, and open the mind of his 
English pupil. As soon as we began to understand each other, he 
gently led me, from a blind and undistinguishing love of reading, 
into the path of instruction. I consented with pleasure that a 
portion of the morning hours should be consecrated to a plan of 
modern history and geography, and to the critical perusal of the 
French and Latin classics ; and at each step I felt myself invig- 
orated by the habits of application and method. His prudence 
repressed and dissembled some youthful sallies ; and as soon as I 
was confirmed in the habits of industry and temperance, he gave 
the reins into my own hands. His favourable report of my be- 
haviour and progress gradually obtained some latitude of action 
and expense; and he wished to alleviate the hardships of my 
lodging and entertainment. The principles of philosophy were 
associated with the examples of taste ; and by a singular chance, 
the book, as well as the man, which contributed the most effect- 
ually to my education, has a stronger claim on my gratitude than 
on my admiration. Mr. De Crousaz, the adversary of Bayle and 
Pope, is not distinguished by lively fancy or profound reflec- 
tion ; and even in his own country, at the end of a few years, his 



488 EDWARD GIBBON. 

name and writings are almost obliterated. But his philosophy had 
been formed in the school of Locke, his divinity in that of Lim- 
borch and Le Clerc ; in a long and laborious life, several genera- 
tions of pupils were taught to think, and even to write ; his lessons 
rescued the academy of Lausanne from Calvinistic prejudice \ and 
he had the rare merit of diffusing a more liberal spirit among the 
clergy and people of the Pays de Vaud. His system of logic, 
which in the last editions has swelled to six tedious and prolix 
volumes, may be praised as a clear and methodical abridgment of 
the art of reasoning, from our simple ideas to the most complex 
operations of the human understanding. This system I studied, 
and meditated, and abstracted, till I have obtained the free com- 
mand of an universal instrument, which I soon presumed to exer- 
cise on my catholic opinions. Pavilliard was not unmindful that 
his first task, his most important duty, was to reclaim me from 
the errors of popery. The intermixture of sects has rendered the 
Swiss clergy acute and learned on the topics of controversy ; and 
I have some of his letters in which he celebrates the dexterity of 
his attack, and my gradual concessions after a firm and well- 
managed defence. 7 I was willing, and I am now willing, to allow 
him a handsome share of the honour of my conversion : yet I 
must observe, that it was principally effected by my private reflec- 
tions ; and I still remember my solitary transport at the discovery 
of a philosophical argument against the doctrine of transubstanti- 
ation : that the text of scripture, which seems to inculcate the 
real presence, is attested only by a single sense — our sight ; while 
the real presence itself is disproved by three of our senses — the 
sight, the touch, and the taste. The various articles of the 
Romish creed disappeared like a dream ; and after a full convic- 

7 M. Pavilliard has described to me the astonishment with which he gazed 
on Mr. Gibbon standing before him, — a thin little figure, with a large head, 
disputing and urging, with the greatest ability, all the best arguments that had 
ever been used in favour of popery. Mr. Gibbon many years ago became 
very fat and corpulent, but he had uncommonly small bones, and was very 
slight made. — Sheffield's Note. 






MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 489 

tion, on Christmas-day, 1754, I received the sacrament in the 
church of Lausanne. It was here that I suspended my religious 
inquiries, acquiescing with implicit belief in the tenets and myste- 
ries, which are adopted by the general consent of catholics and 
protestants. 

Such, from my arrival at Lausanne, during the first eighteen or 
twenty months (July 1753-March 1755), were my useful studies, 
the foundation of all my future improvements. But every man 
who rises above the common level has received two educations : 
the first from his teachers ; the second, more personal and impor- 
tant, from himself. He will not, like the fanatics of the last age, 
define the moment of grace ; but he cannot forget the aera of his 
life, in which his mind has expanded to its proper form and 
dimensions. My worthy tutor had the good sense and modesty 
to discern how far he could be useful : as soon as he felt that I 
advanced beyond his speed and measure, he wisely left me to my 
genius ; and the hours of lesson were soon lost in the voluntary 
labour of the whole morning, and sometimes of the whole day. 
The desire of prolonging my time, gradually confirmed the salu- 
tary habit of early rising, to which I have always adhered, with 
some regard to seasons and situations; but it is happy for my 
eyes and my health, that my temperate ardour has never been 
seduced to trespass on the hours of the night. During the last 
three years of my residence at Lausanne, I may assume the merit 
of serious and solid application ; but I am tempted to distinguish 
the last eight months of the year 1755, as the period of the most 
extraordinary diligence and rapid progress. 8 In my French 

8 Journal, December, 1755.] — I* 1 finishing this year, I must remark how 
favourable it was to my studies. In the space of eight months, from the begin- 
ning of April, I learnt the principles of drawing ; made myself complete mas- 
ter of the French and Latin languages, with which I was very superficially 
acquainted before, and wrote and translated a great deal in both; read Cic- 
ero's Epistles ad Familiares, his Brutus, all his Orations, his Dialogues de 
AmicitiS, and De Senectute; Terence, twice; and Pliny's Epistles; in 
French, Giannone's History of Naples, and l'Abbe Bannier's Mythology, and 
M. de Boehat's Memoirs sur la Suisse, and wrote a very ample relation of my 



490 EDWARD GIBBON. 

and Latin translations I adopted an excellent method, which, 
from my own success, I would recommend to the imitation of 
students. I chose some classic writer, such as Cicero and Vertot, 
the most approved for purity and elegance of style. I translated, 
for instance, an epistle of Cicero into French ; and after throwing 
it aside, till the words and phrases were obliterated from my 
memory, I re-translated my French into such Latin as I could 
find ; and then compared each sentence of my imperfect version, 
with the ease, the grace, the propriety of the Roman orator. A 
similar experiment was made on several pages of the Revolutions 
of Vertot ; I turned them into Latin, returned them after a suffi- 
cient interval into my own French, and again scrutinized the 
resemblance or dissimilitude of the copy and the original. By 
degrees I was less ashamed, by degrees I was more satisfied with 
myself; and I persevered in the practice of these double transla- 
tions, which filled several books, till I had acquired the knowledge 
of both idioms, and the command at least of a correct style. 
This useful exercise of writing was accompanied and succeeded by 
the more pleasing occupation of reading the best authors. The 
perusal of the Roman classics was at once my exercise and reward. 
Dr. Middleton's History, which I then appreciated above its true 
value, naturally directed me to the writings of Cicero. The most 
perfect editions, that of Olivet, which may adorn the shelves of 
the rich, that of Ernesti, which should lie on the table of the 
learned, were not in my power. For the familiar epistles I used 
the text and English commentary of Bishop Ross : but my general 
edition was that of Verburgius, published at x\msterdam in two 
large volumes in folio, with an indifferent choice of various notes. 
I read, with application and pleasure, all the epistles, all the ora- 
ti ms, and the most important treatises of rhetoric and philosophy ; 

t jur. I likewise began to study Greek, and went through the Grammar. I 
b3gun to make very large collections of what I read. But what I esteem most 
of all, from the perusal and meditation of De Crousaz's Logic, I not only 
understood the principles of that science, but formed my mind to a habit of 
thinking and reasoning I had no idea of before. 



MEMOIRS OF MY T.IFR AND WRITINGS. 491 

and as I read, I applauded the observation of Quintilian, that 
every student may judge of his own proficiency by the satisfaction 
which he receives from the Roman orator. I tasted the beauties 
of language, I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from 
his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man. 
Cicero in Latin, and Xenophon in Greek, are indeed the twj 
ancients whom I would first propose to a liberal scholar ; not only 
for the merit of their style and sentiments, but for the admirable 
lessons, which may be applied almost to every situation of public 
and private life. Cicero's Epistles may in particular afford the 
models of every form of correspondence, from the careless effu- 
sions of tenderness and friendship, to the well-guarded declaration 
of discreet and dignified resentment. After finishing this great 
author, a library of eloquence and reason, I formed a more exten- 
sive plan of reviewing the Latin classics, 9 under the four divisions 
of, i. historians, 2. poets, 3. orators, and 4. philosophers, in a 
chronological series, from the days of Plautus and Sallust, to the 
decline of the language and empire of Rome : and this plan, in 
the last twenty-seven months of my residence at Lausanne (Jan. 
1756-April 1758), I nearly accomplished. Nor was this review, 
however rapid, either hasty or superficial. I indulged myself in a 
second and even a third perusal of Terence, Virgil, Horace, Taci- 
tus, &c, and studied to imbibe the sense and spirit most con- 
genial to my own. I never suffered a difficult or corrupt passage 
to escape, till I had viewed it in every light of which it was sus- 
ceptible : though often disappointed, I always consulted the most 
learned or ingenious commentators, Torrentius and Dacier on 
Horace, Catrou and Servius on Virgil, Lipsius on Tacitus, Meziriac 
on Ovid, &c. ; and in the ardour of my inquiries, I embraced a 
large circle of historical and critical erudition. My abstracts of 
each book were made in the French language : my observations 

9 Journal, Jan. 1756. — I determined to read over the Latin authors in 
order; and read this year, Virgil, Sallust, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius 
Maximus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Quintus Curtius, Justin, Florus, Plautus, Terence, 
and Lucretius. I also read and meditated Locke upon the Understanding. 



492 EDWARD GIBBON. 

often branched into particular essays ; and I can still read, with- 
out contempt, a dissertation of eight folio pages on eight lines 
(287-294) of the fourth Georgic of Virgil. Mr. Deyverdun, my 
friend, whose name will be frequently repeated, had joined with 
equal zeal, though not with equal perseverance, in the same under- 
taking. To him every thought, every composition, was instantly 
communicated ; with him I enjoyed the benefits of a free conver- 
sation on the topics of our common studies. 

But it is scarcely possible for a mind endowed with any active 
curiosity to be long conversant with the Latin classics, without 
aspiring to know the Greek originals, whom they celebrate as their 
masters, and of whom they so warmly recommend the study and 
imitation : 

. . . Vos exemplaria Gr&ca 

Nocturnd versate manu, versate diurnd. 10 

It was now that I regretted the early years which had been 
wasted in sickness or idleness, or mere idle reading ; that I con- 
demned the perverse method of our schoolmasters, who, by first 
teaching the mother-language, might descend with so much ease 
and perspicuity to the origin and etymology of a derivative idiom. 
In the nineteenth year of my age I determined to supply this 
defect ; and the lessons of Pavilliard again contributed to smooth 
the entrance of the way, the Greek alphabet, the grammar, and 
the pronunciation according to the French accent. At my earnest 
request we presumed to open the Iliad ; and I had the pleasure 
of beholding, though darkly and through a glass, the true image 
of Homer, whom I had long since admired in an English dress. 
After my tutor had left me to myself, I worked my way through 
about half the Iliad, and afterwards interpreted alone a large por- 
tion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardour, destitute of 
aid and emulation, was gradually cooled, and, from the barren task 
of searching words in a lexicon, I withdrew to the free and familiar 

10 Study the Greek models by night and by day. — Horace, Ars Poetica, 
208-9. 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 493 

conversation of Virgil and Tacitus. Yet in my residence at Lau- 
sanne I had laid a solid foundation, which enabled me, in a more 
propitious season, to prosecute the study of Grecian literature. 

From a blind idea of the usefulness of such abstract science, my 
father had been desirous, and even pressing, that I should devote 
some time to the mathematics ; nor could I refuse to comply with 
so reasonable a wish. During two winters I attended the private 
lectures of Monsieur de Traytorrens, who explained the elements 
of algebra and geometry, as far as the conic sections of the Mar- 
quis de l'H6pital, and appeared satisfied with my diligence and 
improvement. 11 But as my childish propensity for numbers and 
calculations was totally extinct, I was content to receive the pas- 
sive impression of my Professor's lectures, without any active exer- 
cise of my own powers. As soon as I understood the principles, 
I relinquished for ever the pursuit of the mathematics ; nor can I 
lament that I desisted, before my mind was hardened by the habit 
of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the finer feelings of moral 
evidence, which must, however, determine the actions and opin- 
ions of our lives. I listened with more pleasure to the proposal 
of studying the law of nature and nations, which was taught in the 
academy of Lausanne by Mr. Vicat, a professor of some learning 
and reputation. But instead of attending his public or private 
course, I preferred in my closet the lessons of his masters, and my 

U Journal, January, 1757.— I began to study algebra under M. de Tray- 
torrens, went through the elements of algebra and geometry, and the three 
first books of the Marquis de l'Hopital's Conic Sections. I also read Tibullus, 
Catullus, Propertius, Horace, (with Dacier's and Torrentius's Notes,) Virgil, 
Ovid's Epistles, with Meziriac's Commentary, the Ars Amandi, and the Ele- 
gies; likewise the Augustus and Tiberius of Suetonius, and a Latin transla- 
tion of Dion Cassius, from the death of Julius Caesar to the death of Augustus. 
I also continued my correspondence begun last year with M. Allemand of Bex, 
and the Professor Breitinger of Zurich; and opened a new one with the 
Professor Gesner of Gottingen. 

N. B. Last year and this, I read St. John's Gospel, with part of Xenophon's 
Cyropsedia; the Iliad, and Herodotus; but upon the whole, I rather neglected 
mv Greek. 



494 EDWARD GIB BOX. 

own reason. Without being disgusted by Grotius or Puffendorf, I 
studied in their writings the duties of a man, the rights of a citi- 
zen, the theory of justice (it is, alas ! a theory), and the laws of 
peace and war, which have had some influence on the practice of 
modern Europe. My fatigues were alleviated by the good sense 
of their commentator Barbeyrac. Locke's Treatise of Govern- 
ment instructed me in the knowledge of Whig principles, which 
are rather founded in reason than experience ; but my delight was 
in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy of style, and 
boldness of hypothesis, were powerful to awaken and stimulate the 
genius of the age. The logic of De Crousaz had prepared me to 
engage with his master Locke and his antagonist Bayle ; of whom 
the former may be used as a bridle, and the latter applied as a 
spur, to the curiosity of a young philosopher. According to the 
nature of their respective works, the schools of argument and ob- 
jection, I carefully went through the Essay on Human Understand- 
ing, and occasionally consulted the most interesting articles of the 
Philosophic Dictionary. In the infancy of my reason I turned over, 
as an idle amusement, the most serious and important treatise : in 
its maturity, the most trifling performance could exercise my taste 
or judgment, and more than once I have been led by a novel into 
a deep and instructive train of thinking. But I cannot forbear to 
mention three particular books, since they may have remotely 
contributed to form the historian of the Roman empire, i. From 
the Provincial Letters of Pascal, which almost every year I have 
perused with new pleasure, I learned to manage the weapon of 
grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of ecclesiastical sol- 
emnity. 2. The Life of Julian, by the Abbe de la Bleterie, first 
introduced me to the man and the times ; and I should be glad 
to recover my first essay on the truth of the miracle which stopped 
the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. 3. In Giannone's 
Civil History of Naples I observed with a critical eye the progress 
and abuse of sacerdotal power, and the revolutions of Italy in the 
darker ages. This various reading, which I now conducted with 
discretion, was digested, according to the precept and model of 



MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 495 

Mr. Locke, into a large common-place book ; a practice, however, 
which I do not strenuously recommend. The action of the pen 
will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the 
paper : but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious 
method are adequate to the waste of time ; and I must agree with 
Dr. Johnson, (Idler, No. 74.) "that what is twice read, is com- 
monly better remembered, than what is transcribed." 



XXIV. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

(1771-1832.) 

ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 

[Written before 1819.] 

The Drama of England commenced, as we have already ob- 
served, upon the Spanish model. Ferrex and Porrex was the 
first composition approaching to a regular tragedy ; and it was 
acted before Queen Elizabeth upon the 18th of January, 15 6 1, by 
the gentlemen of the Inner Temple. It partakes rather of the 
character of a historical than of a classical Drama, although more 
nearly allied to the latter class than the chronicle plays which 
afterwards took possession of the stage. We have already re- 
corded Sir Philip Sidney's commendation of this play, which he 
calls by the name of Gorboduc from one of the principal charac- 
ters. 1 Acted by a learned body, and written in great part by Lord 
Sackville, the principal author of the Mirror for Magistrates, the 
first of English tragedies assumed in some degree the honours of 
the learned buskin ; but although a Chorus was presented accord- 
ing to the classical model, the play was free from the observance 
of the unities ; and contains many irregularities severely con- 
demned by the regular critics. 

English comedy, considered as a regular composition, is said to 

1 Gorboduc was the father of Ferrex and Porrex, between whom he divided 
his kingdom, and the plot details the wars consequent thereupon. It is taken 
from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Britons. See ante, p. 39. 
496 



ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 497 

have commenced with Gammer Gurtorts Needle} This " right 
pithy, pleasant, and merry comedy," was the supposed composition 
of John Still, Master of Arts, and afterwards Bishop of Bath and 
Wells. It was acted in Christ Church College, Cambridge, 1575. 
It is a piece of low humour, the whole jest turning upon the loss 
and recovery of the needle with which Gammer Gurton was to 
repair the breeches of her man Hodge ; but, in point of manners, 
it is a great curiosity, as the curta suppellex 3 of our ancestors is 
scarcely anywhere so well described. The popular characters also, 
the Sturdy Beggar, the Clown, the Country Vicar, and the Shrew, 
of the sixteenth century, are drawn in colours taken from the 
life. The unities of time, place, and action, are observed through 
the play with an accuracy of which France might be jealous. 
The time is a few hours — the place, the open square of the 
village before Gammer Gurton's door — the action, the loss of the 
needle — and this, followed by the search for and final recovery 
of that necessary implement, is intermixed with no other thwarting 
or subordinate interest, but is progressive from the commence- 
ment to the conclusion. 

It is remarkable that the earliest English tragedy and comedy 
are both works of considerable merit ; that each partakes of the 
distinct character of its class ; that the tragedy is without intermix- 
ture of comedy ; the comedy, without any intermixture of tragedy. 

These models were followed by a variety of others, in which no 
such distinctions were observed. Numerous theatres sprung up in 
different parts of the metropolis, opened upon speculation by dis- 
tinct troops of performers. Their number shows how much they 
interested public curiosity ; for men never struggle for a share in a 
losing profession. They acted under licenses, which appear to 
have been granted for the purpose of police alone, not of exclusive 
privilege or monopoly; since London contained, in the latter 

2 In 1820 it was ascertained by Collier that Udall's comedy, Ralph Roister 
Doister, was earlier than Gammer Gurton's Needle. See Collier's History of 
English Dramatic Poetry, Vol. II., pp. 444 &. ed. l8 3!- 
* 3 small furniture. Used metaphorically in Persius, Satires, IV. 52. 



498 SIR WAITER SCOTT. 

part of the sixteenth century, no fewer than fourteen distinct com- 
panies of players, with very considerable privileges and remunera- 
tions. See Drake's Shakspeare and his Times, vol. ii, p. 205. 

The public, therefore, in the widest sense of the word, was at 
once arbiter and patron of the Drama. The companies of players 
who traversed the country, might indeed assume the name of 
some peer or baron, for the sake of introduction or protection ; but 
those of the metropolis do not, at this early period of our dramatic 
history, appear to have rested in any considerable degree upon 
learned or aristocratic privilege. The license was obtained from 
the crown, but their success depended upon the voice of the peo- 
ple ; and the pieces which they brought forward were, of course, 
adapted to popular taste. It followed necessarily that histories 
and romantic Dramas were the favourites of the period. A gen- 
eral audience in an unlearned age requires rather amusement than 
conformity to rules, and is more displeased with a tiresome uni- 
formity than shocked with the breach of all the unities. The 
players and dramatists, before the rise of Shakspeare, followed, of 
consequence, the taste of the public ; and dealt in the surprising, 
elevating, and often bombastic incidents of tragedy, as well as in 
the low humours and grotesque situations of the comic scene. 
Where these singly were found to lack attraction, they mingled 
them together, and dashed their tragic plot with an under-intrigue 
of the lowest buffoonery, without any respect to taste or congruity. 

The clown was no stranger to the stage ; he interfered, without 
ceremony, in the most heart-rending scenes, to the scandal of the 
more learned spectators. 

" Now lest such frightful shows of fortune's fall 
And bloody tyrant's rage should chance appall 
The death-struck audience, 'midst the silent rout, 
Comes leaping in a self-misformed lout, 
And laughs and grins, and frames his mimic face, 
And jostles straight into the prince's place; 
Then doth the theatre echo all aloud, 
With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd, 
A goodly hotchpotch, where vile russettings 
Are matched with monarchs and with mighty kings.". 



ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 499 

An ancient stage-trick, illustrative of the mixture of tragic and 
comic action in Shakspeare's time, was long preserved in the 
theatre. Henry IV., holding council before the battle of Shrews- 
bury, was always represented as seated on a drum ; and when he 
rose and came forward to address his nobles, the place was occu- 
pied by FalstarT; a practical jest which seldom failed to produce 
a laugh from the galleries. The taste and judgment of the author 
himself were very different. During the whole scene, FalstarT 
gives only once, and under irresistible temptation, the rein to his 
petulant wit, and it is instantly checked by the prince ; to whom, 
by the way, and not to the king, his words ought to be addressed. 

The English stage might be considered equally without rule and 
without model when Shakspeare arose. The effect of the genius 
of an individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty ; but that 
genius, in its turn, is formed according to the opinions prevalent at 
the period when it comes into existence. Such was the case with 
Shakspeare. Had he received an education more extensive, and 
possessed a taste refined by the classical models, it is probable 
that he also, in admiration of the ancient Drama, might have mis- 
taken the form for the essence, and subscribed to those rules 
which had produced such masterpieces of art. Fortunately for 
the full exertion of a genius, as comprehensive and versatile as 
intense and powerful, Shakspeare had no access to any models of 
which the commanding merit might have controlled and limited 
his own exertions. He followed the path which a nameless crowd 
of obscure writers had trodden before him ; but he moved in it 
with the grace and majestic step of a being of a superior order ; 
and vindicated for ever the British theatre from a pedantic restric- 
tion to classical rule. Nothing went before Shakspeare which 
in any respect was fit to fix and stamp the character of a national 
Drama ; and certainly no one will succeed him capable of estab- 
lishing, by mere authority, a form more restricted than that which 
Shakspeare used. 

Such is the action of existing circumstances upon genius and 
the re-action of genius upon future circumstances. Shakspeare 



500 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

and Corneille was each the leading spirit of his age ; and the dif- 
ference between them is well marked by the editor of the latter : — 
" Corneille est inegal comme Shakespeare, et plein de genie comme 
lui ; mais le genie de Corneille etoit a celui de Shakespeare ce qu'un 
seigneur est a regard d'un homme de peuple ne avec le meme esprit 
que lui." 4 This distinction is strictly accurate, and contains a 
compliment to the English author which, assuredly, the critic did 
not intend to make. Corneille wrote as a courtier, circumscribed 
within the imaginary rules and ceremonies of a court, as a chicken 
is by a circle of chalk drawn round it. Shakspeare, composing 
for the amusement of the public alone, had within his province 
not only the inexhaustible field of actual life, but the whole ideal 
world of fancy and superstition ; more favourable to the display of 
poetical genius than even existing realities. Under the circum- 
stances of Corneille, Shakspeare must have been restricted to the 
same dull, regular, and unvaried system. He must have written, 
not according to the dictates of his own genius, but in conformity 
to the mandate of some Intendant des menus plaisirs ; s or of some 
minister of state, who, like Cardinal Richelieu, thought he could 
write a tragedy because he could govern a kingdom. It is not 
equally clear to what height Corneille might have ascended, had he 
enjoyed the national immunities of Shakspeare. Each pitched 
down a land-mark in his art. The circle of Shakspeare was so 
extensive, that it is with advantage liable to many restrictions ; 
that of Corneille included a narrow limit, which his successors 
have deemed it unlawful to enlarge. 

It is not our intention, within the narrow space to which our 
essay is necessarily limited, to enlarge upon the character and 
writings of Shakspeare. We can only notice his performances as 
events in the history of the theatre — of a gigantic character, 
indeed, so far as its dignity, elevation, and importance are consid- 

4 Corneille is unequal like Shakespeare, and full of genius like hitn ; but 
the genius of Corneille was to that of Shakespeare what a lord is in respect to 
a man of the people, born with the same wit as he. 

5 Director of minor entertainments. 



ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 501 

ered ; but, in respect of the mere practice of the Drama, rather 
fixing and sanctioning, than altering or reforming, those rules and 
forms which he found already established. This we know for cer- 
tain, that those historical plays or chronicles, in which Shakspeare's 
muse has thrown a never-fading light upon the history of his 
country, did, almost every one of them, exist before him in the 
rude shapes of dry dialogue and pitiful buffoonery, stitched into 
scenes by the elder play-wrights of the stage. His romantic Dramas 
exhibit the same contempt of regularity which was manifested by 
Marlow, and other writers ; for where there was abuse or extreme 
license upon the stage, the example of Shakspeare may be often 
quoted as its sanction, never as tending to reform it. In these 
particulars the practice of our immortal bard was contrasted with 
that of Ben Jonson, a severe and somewhat pedantic scholar— a 
man whose mind was coarse, though possessing both strength and 
elevation, and whose acute perception of comic humours was 
tinctured with vulgarity. 

Jonson's tragic strength consists in a sublime, and sometimes 
harsh, expression of moral sentiment; but displays little of tu- 
multuous and ardent passion, still less of tenderness or deli- 
cacy, although there are passages in which he seems adequate 
to expressing them. He laboured in the mine of the classics, 
but over-loaded himself with the ore, which he could not, or 
would not, refine. His Cataline and Sejanus are laboured trans- 
lations from Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus, which his own age did 
not endure, and which no succeeding generation will be probably 
much tempted to revive. With the stern superiority of learning 
over ignorance, he asserted himself a better judge of his own pro- 
ductions, than the public which condemned him, and haughtily 
claimed the laurel which the general suffrage often withheld, but 
the world has as yet shown no disposition to reverse the opinion of 
their predecessors. 

In comedy, Jonson made some efforts partaking of the character 
of the older comedy of the Grecians. In his Tale of a Tub he 
follows the path of Aristophanes and lets his wit run into low 



502 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

buffoonery, that he might bring upon the stage Inigo Jones, his 
personal enemy. In Cynthia's Revells, and The Staple of News, 
we find him introducing the dull personification of abstract passions 
and qualities, and turning legitimate comedy into an allegorical 
mask. What interest can the reader have in such characters as 
the three Penny boys, and their transactions with the Lady 
Pecunia? 

Some of Jonson's more legitimate comedies may be also taxed 
here with filthiness of language ; of which disgusting attribute his 
works exhibit more instances than those of any English writer of 
eminence, excepting Swift. Let us, however, be just to a master- 
spirit of his age. The comic force of Jonson was strong, marked, 
and peculiar ; and he excelled even Shakspeare himself in draw- 
ing that class of truly English characters, remarkable for peculiarity 
of humour — that is, for some mode of thought, speech, and be- 
haviour, superinduced upon the natural disposition, by profession, 
education, or fantastical affectation of singularity. In blazoning 
these forth with their natural attributes and appropriate language, 
Ben Jonson has never been excelled ; and his works everywhere 
exhibit a consistent and manly moral, resulting naturally from the 
events of the scene. 

It must also be remembered, that, although it was Jonson's fate 
to be eclipsed by the superior genius, energy, and taste of Shak- 
speare, yet those advantages which enabled him to maintain an 
honourable though an unsuccessful struggle, were of high advantage 
to the Drama. Jonson was the first who showed, by example, the 
infinite superiority of a well-conceived plot, all the parts of which 
bore upon each other, and forwarded an interesting conclusion, 
over a tissue of detached scenes, following without necessary con- 
nexion or increase of interest. The plot of The Fox is admirably 
conceived ; and that of The Akhymist, though faulty in the con- 
clusion, is nearly equal to it. In the two comedies of Every Man 
in his Humour, and Every Man out of his Humour, the plot de- 
serves much less praise, and is deficient at once in interest and 
unity of action ; but in that of The Silent Woman, nothing can 



ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 503 

exceed the art with which the circumstance upon which the con- 
clusion turns, is, until the very last scene, concealed from the 
knowledge of the reader, while he is tempted to suppose it con- 
stantly within his reach. In a word, Jonson is distinguished by 
his strength and stature, even in those days when there were giants 
in the land ; and affords a model of a close, animated, and charac- 
teristic style of comedy, abounding in moral satire, and distinguished 
at once by force and art, which was afterwards more cultivated by 
English dramatists, than the lighter, more wild, and more fanciful 
department in which Shakspeare moved, beyond the reach of 
emulation. 

The general opinion of critics has assigned genius as the charac- 
teristic of Shakspeare, and art as the appropriate excellence of 
Jonson ; not, surely, that Jonson was deficient in genius, but that 
art was the principal characteristic of his laborious scenes. We 
learn from his own confession and from the panegyrics of his 
friends, as well as the taunts of his enemies, that he was a slow 
composer. The natural result of laborious care is jealousy of fame ; 
for that which we do with labour, we value highly when achieved. 
Shakspeare, on the other hand, appears to have composed rapidly 
and carelessly ; and, sometimes, even without considering, while 
writing the earlier acts, how the catastrophe was to be huddled up 
in that which was to conclude the piece. We may fairly conclude 
him to have been indifferent about fame, who would take so little 
pains to win it. Much, perhaps, might have been achieved by the 
union of these opposed qualities, and by blending the art of 
Jonson with the fiery invention and fluent expression of his great 
contemporary. But such a union of opposite excellences in the 
same author was hardly to be expected ; nor, perhaps, would the 
result have proved altogether so favourable as might at first view 
be conceived. We should have had more perfect specimens of 
the art ; but they must have been much fewer in number ; and 
posterity would certainly have been deprived of that rich luxuri- 
ance of dramatic excellences and poetic beauties, which, like wild 
flowers upon a common field, lie scattered profusely among the 
unacted plays of Shakspeare. 



.504 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Although incalculably superior to his contemporaries, Shakspeare 
had successful imitators, and the art of Jonson was not unrivalled. 
Massinger appears to have studied the works of both, with the in- 
tention of uniting their excellences. He knew the strength of 
plot ; and although his plays are altogether irregular, yet he well 
understood the advantage of a strong and defined interest ; and in 
unravelling the intricacy of his intrigues, he often displays the 
management of a master. Art, therefore, not perhaps in its tech- 
nical, but in its most valuable sense, was Massinger's as well as 
Jonson's ; and, in point of composition, many passages of his plays 
are not unworthy of Shakspeare. Were we to distinguish Massin- 
ger's peculiar excellence, we should name that first of dramatic 
attributes, a full conception of character, a strength in bringing out, 
and consistency in adhering to it. He does not, indeed, always 
introduce his personages to the audience, in their own proper 
character ; it dawns forth gradually in the progress of the piece, as 
in the hypocritical Luke, or in the heroic Marullo. But, upon 
looking back, we are always surprised and delighted to trace from 
the very beginning, intimations of what the personage is to prove, 
as the play advances. There is often a harshness of outline, how- 
ever, in the characters of this dramatist, which prevents their ap- 
proaching to the natural and easy portraits bequeathed us by 
Shakspeare. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, men of remarkable talent, seemed to 
have followed Shakspeare's mode of composition, rather than 
Jonson's, and thus to have altogether neglected that art which 
Jonson taught, and which Massinger in some sort practised. They 
may, indeed, be rather said to have taken for their model the 
boundless license of the Spanish stage, from which many of their 
pieces are expressly and avowedly derived. The acts of their 
plays are so detached from each other, in substance and consis- 
tency, that the plot scarce can be said to hang together at all, or 
to have, in any sense of the word, a beginning, progress, and con- 
clusion. It seems as if the play began, because the curtain rose, 
and ended because it fell ; the author, in the meantime, exerting 



ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 505 

his genius for the amusement of the spectators, pretty much in the 
same manner as in the Scenario of the Italians, by the actors filling 
up, with their extempore wit, the scenes chalked out for them. 
To compensate for this excess of irregularity, the plays of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher have still a high poetical value. If character 
be sometimes violated, probability discarded, and the interest of 
the plot neglected, the reader is, on the other hand, often gratified 
by the most beautiful description, the most tender and passionate 
dialogue ; a display of brilliant wit and gaiety, or a feast of comic 
humour. These attributes had so much effect on the public that, 
during the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth 
centuries, many of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays had possession 
of the stage, while those of Shakspeare were laid upon the shelf. 

Shirley, Ford, Webster, Decker, and others added performances 
to the early treasures of the English Drama, which abound with 
valuable passages. There never, probably, rushed into the lists of 
literary composition together, a band more distinguished for talent. 
If the early Drama be inartificial and unequal, no nation, at least, 
can show so many detached scenes, and even acts, of high poetical 
merit. One powerful cause seems to have produced an effect so 
marked and distinguished ; to wit, the universal favour of a theatri- 
cal public, which daily and nightly thronged the numerous theatres 
then open in the city of London. 

In considering this circumstance, it must above all be remem- 
bered that these numerous audiences crowded, not to feast their 
eyes upon show and scenery, but to see and hear the literary pro- 
duction of the evening. The scenes which the stage exhibited, 
were probably of the most paltry description. Some rude helps 
to the imagination of the audience might be used by introducing 
the gate of a castle or town, the monument of the Capulets, by 
sinking a trap-door, or by thrusting in a bed. The good-natured 
audience readily received these hints with that conventional allow- 
ance which Sir Philip Sidney had ridiculed, 6 and which Shakspeare 
himself has alluded to, when he appeals from the poverty of 

6 See ante, pp. 39, 40. 



506 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

the theatrical representation to the excited imagination of his 
audience. 



" Can this cockpit hold 

The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram 

Within this wooden O, the very casques 

That did affright the air at Agincourt? 

O, pardon ! since a crooked figure may 

Attest, in little place, a million; 

And let us, ciphers to this great account, 

On your imaginary forces work : 

Suppose, within the girdle of these walls 

Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies, 

Whose high upreared and abutting fronts 

The perilous, narrow ocean parts asunder; 

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them 

Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth. 

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, 

Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times; 

Turning the accomplishment of many years 

Into an hour-glass." — 

Chorus to K. Henry V. \Prologtu ', II-31.] 

Such were the allowances demanded by Shakspeare and his con- 
temporaries from the public of their day, in consideration of the 
imperfect means and appliances of their theatrical machinery. 
Yet the deficiency of scenery and show, which, when existing in 
its utmost splendour, divides the interest of the piece in the mind 
of the ignorant, and rarely affords much pleasure to a spectator of 
taste, may have been rather an advantage to the infant Drama. 
The spectators having nothing to withdraw their attention from the 
immediate business of the piece, gave it their full and uninter- 
rupted attention. And here it may not be premature to enquire 
into the characteristical difference between the audiences of the 
present day and of those earlier theatrical ages, when the Drama 
boasted not only the names of Shakspeare, of Massinger, of Jonson, 
of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Shirley, of Ford ; but others of sub- 
ordinate degree, the meanest of whom shows occasionally more 
fire than warms whole reams of modern plays. This will probably 



ESSAY OX THE DRAMA. 507 

be found to rest on the varied and contrasted feelings with which 
the audience of ancient and that of modern days attend the prog- 
ress of the scene. 

Nothing, indeed, is more certain, than that the general cast of 
theatrical composition must receive its principal bent and colour- 
ing from the taste of the audience. 

u The Drama's* laws, the Drama's patrons give; 
For those who live to please, must please to live." 

Johnson's Prologue, IJ4J. : 

But though this be an undeniable, and in some respects a 
melancholy truth, it is not less certain, that genius, labouring in 
behalf of the public, possesses the power of re-action, and of in- 
fluencing, in its turn, that taste to which it is in some respects 
obliged to conform ; while, on the other hand, the play-wright, who 
aims only to catch the passing plaudit and the profit of a season, by 
addressing himself exclusively to the ruling predilections of the 
audience, degrades the public taste still farther by the gross food 
which he ministers to it ; unless it shall be supposed that he may 
contribute involuntarily to rouse it from its degeneracy, by cram- 
ming it even to satiety and loathing. This action, therefore, and 
re-action, of the taste of the age on dramatic writing, and vice 
versa, must both be kept in view, when treating of the difference 
betwixt the days of Shakspeare and our own. 

Perhaps it is the leading distinction betwixt the ancient and 
modern audiences, that the former came to listen, and to admire ; 
to fling the reins of their imaginations into the hands of the author 
and actors, and to be pleased, like the reader to whom Sterne 
longed to do homage, " they knew not why, and cared not where- 
fore." The novelty of dramatic entertainments (for there elapsed 
only about twenty years betwixt the date of Gammer GurtorCs 
Needle, accounted the earliest English play, 8 and the rise of 

7 Prologue spoken at the opening of the Drury Lane Theatre, 1747. Read 
we that for those who. 

8 See Note 2 . 



508 SIR WAITER SCOTT. 

Shakspeare) must have had its natural effect upon the audience. 
The sun of Shakspeare arose almost without a single gleam of in- 
tervening twilight ; and it was no wonder that the audience, intro- 
duced to this enchanting and seductive art at once, under such an 
effulgence of excellence, should have been more disposed to won- 
der than to criticise ; to admire — or rather to adore — than to 
measure the height, or ascertain the course, of the luminary which 
diffused such glory around him. The great number of theatres 
in London, and the profusion of varied talent which was dedicated 
to this service, attest the eagerness of the public to enjoy the en- 
tertainments of the scene. The ruder amusements of the age lost 
their attraction; and the royal bear-ward of Queen Elizabeth 
lodged a formal complaint at the feet of her majesty, that the play- 
houses had seduced the audience from his periodical bear-bait- 
ings ! This fact is worth a thousand conjectures ; and we can 
hardly doubt, that the converts, transported by their improving 
taste from the bear-garden to the theatre, must, generally speaking, 
have felt their rude minds subdued and led captive by the supe- 
rior intelligence, which not only placed on the stage at pleasure 
all ranks, all ages, all tempers, all passions of mere humanity, but 
extended its powers beyond the bounds of time and space, and 
seemed to render visible to mortal eyes the secrets of the invisible 
world. We may, perhaps, form the best guess of the feelings of 
Shakespeare's contemporary audience, by recollecting the emotions 
of any rural friend of rough, but sound sense, and ardent feelings, 
whom we have had the good fortune to conduct to a theatre for 
the first time in his life. It may be well imagined, that such a 
spectator thinks little of the three dramatic unities, of which 
Aristotle says so little, and his commentators and followers talk so 
much ; and that the poet and the performers have that enviable 
influence over his imagination, which transports him from place to 
place at pleasure ; crowds years into the course of hours, and 
interests him in the business of each scene, however disconnected 
from the others. His eyes are riveted to the stage, his ears drink 
in the accents of the speakers, and he experiences in his mature 



ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 509 

age, what we have all felt in childhood — a sort of doubt whether 
the beings and business of the scene be real or fictitious. In this 
state of delightful fascination, Shakspeare and the gigantic dra- 
matic champions of his age found the British public at large ; and 
how they availed themselves of the advantages which so favourable 
a temper afforded them, their works will show so long as the lan- 
guage of Britain continues to be read. 9 It is true that the enthu- 
siastic glow of the public admiration, like the rays of a tropical sun 
darted upon a rich soil, called up in profusion weeds as well as 
flowers ; and that, spoiled in some degree by the indulgent accep- 
tation which attended their efforts, even our most admired writers 
of Elizabeth's age not unfrequently exceeded the bounds of criti- 
cal nicety, and even of common taste and decorum. But these 
eccentricities were atoned for by a thousand beauties, to which, 
fettered by the laws of the classic Drama, the authors would 
hardly have aspired, or aspiring, would hardly have attained. All 
of us know and feel how much the exercise of our powers, espe- 
cially those which rest on keen feelings and self-confidence, is 
dependent upon a favourable reception from those for whom they 
are put in action. Every one has observed how a cold brow can 
damp the brilliancy of wit, and fetter the flow of eloquence ; and 
how both are induced to send forth sallies corresponding in 
strength and fire, upon being received by the kindred enthusiasm 
of those whom they have addressed. And thus, if we owe to the 
indiscriminate admiration with which the Drama was at first re- 
ceived, the irregularities of the authors by whom it was practised, 
we also stand indebted to it, in all probability, for many of its beau- 
ties, which became of rare occurrence, when, by a natural, and 
indeed a necessary change, satiated admiration began to give way 
to other feelings. 

When a child is tired of playing with a new toy, its next delight 
is to examine how it is constructed ; and, in like manner, so soon as 
the first burst of public admiration is over with respect to any new 

9 See note on the style of the drama, quoted from Jeffrey, in Black's edi- 
tion of Scott's Miscellaneous Works, Vol. VI. p. 349. 



510 S/J? WALTER SCOTT. 

mode of composition, the next impulse prompts us to analyze and 
to criticise what was at first the subject of vague and indiscriminate 
wonder. In the first instance, the toy is generally broken to 
pieces ; in the other, while the imagination of the authors is sub- 
jected to the rigid laws of criticism, the public generally lose in 
genius what they may gain in point of taste. The author who 
must calculate upon severe criticism, turns his thoughts more to 
avoid faults than to attain excellence ; as he who is afraid, to 
stumble must avoid rapid motion. The same process takes place 
in all the fine arts : their first productions are distinguished by 
boldness and irregularity; those which succeed, by a better and 
more correct taste, but also by inferior and less original genius. 

The original school founded by Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, 
continued by Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, Shirley, Ford, 
and others, whose compositions are distinguished by irregularity 
as well as genius, was closed by the breaking out of the great civil 
war in 1642. The stage had been the constant object of reproba- 
tion and abhorrence on the part of the Puritans, and its professors 
had no favour to expect at their hands if victorious. We read, 
therefore, with interest, but without surprise, that almost all the 
actors took up arms in behalf of their old master King Charles, in 
whose service most of them perished. Robinson, a principal 
actor at the Blackfriars, was killed by Harrison in cold blood and 
under the application of a text of scripture, — " Cursed is he that 
doeth the work of the Lord negligently." 10 A few survivors en- 
deavoured occasionally to practise their art in secrecy and obscu- 
rity, but were so frequently discovered, plundered, and stripped 
by the soldiers, that " Enter the redcoat, Exit hat and cloak" was 
too frequent a stage direction. Sir William Davenant endeavoured 
to evade the severe zealots of the time, by representing a sort of 
opera, said to have been the first Drama in which movable scenery 
was introduced upon the stage. Even the cavaliers of the more 
grave sort disapproved of the revival of these festive entertain- 
ments during the unstable and melancholy period of the interreg- 

10 Jer. xlviii. 10. Read deceitfully for negligently. 



ESSAY OAT THE DRAMA. 511 

num. " I went," says the excellent Evelyn, in his Diary, 5th 
May, 1658, "to see a new opera after the Italian way, in recita- 
tion, music, and scenes, much inferior to the Italian composure 
and magnificence ; but it was prodigious that in such a time of 
public consternation, such a variety should be kept up or per- 
mitted, and being engaged with company, could not decently 
resist the going to see it, though my heart smote me for it." 
Davenant's theatrical enterprise, abhorred by the fanaticism of 
the one party, and ill adapted to the dejected circumstances of 
the other, was not probably very successful. 



XXV. 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

(1772-1834.) 

BIOGRAPHTA LITERARIA. 

[Written about 1817.] 

Chapter XXI. — Remarks on the Present Mode of Conduct- 
ing Critical Journals. 

Long have I wished to see a fair and philosophical inquisition 
into the character of Wordsworth, as a poet, on the evidence of 
his published works ; and a positive, not a comparative, apprecia- 
tion of their characteristic excellencies, deficiencies, and defects. 
I know no claim, that the mere opinion of any individual can have 
to weigh down the opinion of the author himself, against the proba- 
bility of whose parental partiality we ought to set that of his having 
thought longer and more deeply on the subject. But I should call 
that investigation fair and philosophical in which the critic an- 
nounces and endeavours to establish the principles which he holds 
for the foundation of poetry in general, with the specification of 
these in their application to the different classes of poetry. Hav- 
ing thus prepared his canons of criticism for praise and condemna- 
tion, he would proceed to particularize the most striking passages 
to which he deems them applicable, faithfully noticing the fre- 
quent or infrequent recurrence of similar merits or defects, and as 
faithfully distinguishing what is characteristic from what is acciden- 
tal, or a mere flagging of the wing. Then if his promises be ra- 
tional, his deductions legitimate, and his conclusions justly applied, 
512 



BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 513 

the reader, and possibly the poet himself, may adopt his judgment 
in the light of judgment and in the independence of free-agency. 
If he has erred, he presents his errors in a definite place and 
tangible form, and holds the torch and guides the way to their 
detection. 

I most willingly admit, and estimate at a high value, the services 
which the Edinburgh Review, and others formed afterwards on 
the same plan, have rendered to society in the diffusion of knowl- 
edge. I think the commencement of the Edinburgh Review 
an important epoch in periodical criticism ; and that it has a 
claim upon the gratitude of the literary republic, and indeed of 
the reading public at large, for having originated the scheme of re- 
viewing those books only, which are susceptible and deserving of 
argumentative criticism. Not less meritorious, and far more faith- 
fully and in general far more ably executed, is their plan of sup- 
plying the vacant place of the trash or mediocrity, wisely left to 
sink into oblivion by its own weight, with original essays on the 
most interesting subjects of the time, religious, or political, in 
which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed furnish only the 
name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign the keen- 
ness, or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as long as 
the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of 
the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this 
account, as long as no personal allusions are admitted, and no re- 
commitment (for new trial) of juvenile performances that were 
published, perhaps forgotten, many years before the commence- 
ment of the review ; since for the forcing back of such works 
to public notice no motives are easily assignable but such as are 
furnished to the critic by his own personal malignity, or what is 
still worse, by a habit of malignity in the form of mere wantonness. 

" No private grudge they need, no personal spite : 
The viva sectio is its own delight ! 
All enmity, all envy, they disclaim, 
Disinterested thieves of our good name; 
Cool, sober murderers of their neighbor's fame ! " — s. T. C. 



514 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

Every censure, every sarcasm respecting a publication which 
the critic, with the criticized work before him, can make good, is 
the critic's right. The writer is authorized to reply, but not to 
complain. Neither can any one prescribe to the critic, how soft or 
how hard, how friendly or how bitter, shall be the phrases which 
he is to select for the expression of such reprehension or ridicule. 
The critic must know what effect it is his object to produce and 
with a view to this effect must he weigh his words. But as soon 
as the critic betrays that he knows more of his author than the 
author's publications could have told him ; as soon as from this 
more intimate knowledge, elsewhere obtained, he avails himself of 
the slightest trait against the author ; his censure instantly becomes 
personal injury, his sarcasms personal insults. He ceases to be a 
critic, and takes on him the most contemptible character to which 
a rational creature can be degraded, that of a gossip, backbiter, 
and pasquillant : l but with this heavy aggravation, that he steals 
the unquiet, the deforming passions of the world into the museum, 
into the very place which, next to the chapel and oratory, should 
be our sanctuary and secure place of refuge ; offers abominations 
on the altar of the Muses ; and makes its sacred paling the very 
circle in which he conjures up the lying and profane spirit. 

This determination of unlicensed personality, and of permitted 
and legitimate censure (which I owe in part to the illustrious Les- 
sing, himself a model of acute, spirited, sometimes stinging, but 
always argumentative and honourable, criticism) is beyond con- 
troversy the true one : and though I would not myself exercise 
all the rights of the latter, yet, let but the former be excluded, I 
submit myself to its exercise in the hands of others, without 
complaint and without resentment. 

Let a communication be formed between any number of learned 
men in the various branches of science and literature ; and whether 
the president and central committee be in London, or Edinburgh, 
if only they previously lay aside their individuality and pledge 
themselves inwardly, as well as ostensibly, to administer judgment 

1 lampooner. 



HIOGRAPHIA LITER ARIA. 515 

according to a constitution and code of laws : and if by grounding 
this code on the two-fold basis of universal morals and philosophic 
reason, independent of all foreseen application to particular works 
and authors, they obtain the right to speak each as the represen- 
tative of their body corporate ; they shall have honour and good 
wishes from me, and I shall accord to them their fair dignities, 
though self-assumed, not less cheerfully than if I could inquire 
concerning them in the herald's office, or turn to them in the book 
of peerage. However loud may be the outcries for prevented or 
subverted reputation, however numerous and impatient the com- 
plaints of merciless severity and insupportable despotism, I shall 
neither feel, nor utter aught but to the defence and justification of 
the critical machine. Should any literary Quixote find himself 
provoked by its sounds and regular movements, I should admonish 
him with Sancho Panza, that it is no giant but a windmill ; there it 
stands on its own place, and its own hillock, never goes out of its 
way to attack any one, and to none and from none either gives or 
asks assistance. When the public press has poured in any parts of 
its produce between its mill-stones, it grinds it off, one man's sack 
the same as another, and with whatever wind may happen to be 
then blowing. All the two-and-thirty winds are alike its friends. 
Of the whole wide atmosphere it does not desire a single finger- 
breadth more than what is necessary for its sails to turn round in. 
But this space must be left free and unimpeded. Gnats, beetles, 
wasps, butterflies, and the whole tribe of ephemerals and insignifi- 
cants, may flit in and out and between ; may hum, and buzz, and 
jarr, may shrill their tiny pipes, and wind their puny horns, un- 
chastised and unnoticed. But idlers and bravadoes of larger size 
and prouder show must beware how they place themselves within 
its sweep. Much less may they presume to lay hands on the sails, 
the strength of which is neither greater nor less than as the wind 
is, which drives them round. Whomsoever the remorseless arm 
slings aloft, or whirls along with it in the air, he has himself alone 
to blame ; though, when the same arm throws him from it, it will 
more often double than break the force of his fall. 



516 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERLDGE. 

Putting aside the too manifest and too frequent interference of 
national party, and even personal predilection or aversion j and 
reserving for deeper feelings those worse and more criminal intru- 
sions into the sacredness of private life, which not seldom merit 
legal rather than literary chastisement, the two principal objects and 
occasions which I find for blame and regret in the conduct of the 
review in question are : first, its unfaithfulness to its own announced 
and excellent plan, by subjecting to criticism works neither inde- 
cent nor immoral, yet of such trifling importance even in point of 
size and, according to the critic's own verdict, so devoid of all 
merit, as must excite in the most candid mind the suspicion, either 
that dislike or vindictive feelings were to increase the sale of the 
review by flattering the malignant passions of human nature. That 
I may not myself become subject to the charge which I am bring- 
ing against others, by an accusation without proof, I refer to the 
article on Dr. Rennell's sermon in the very first number of The 
Edinburgh Review as an illustration of my meaning. If in look- 
ing through all the succeeding volumes the reader should find this 
a solitary instance, I must submit to that painful forfeiture of 
esteem, which awaits a groundless or exaggerated charge. 

The second point of objection belongs to this review only in 
common with all other works of periodical criticism ; at least, it 
applies in common to the general system of all, whatever excep- 
tion there may be in favour of particular articles. Or if it attaches 
to The Edinburgh Review and to its only corrival (The Quar- 
terly), with any peculiar force, this results from the superiority 
of talent, acquirement, and information which both have so unde- 
niably displayed ; and which doubtless deepens the regret though 
not the blame. I am referring to the substitution of assertion for 
argument ; to the frequency of arbitrary and sometimes petulant 
verdicts, not seldom unsupported even by a single quotation from 
the work condemned, which might at least have explained the critic's 
meaning, if it did not prove the justice of his sentence. Even 
where this is not the case, the extracts are too often made without 
reference to any general grounds or rules from which the faultiness 



BIOGRAPHIA LITER ARIA. 517 

or inadmissibility of the qualities attributed may be deduced • and 
without any attempt to show that the qualities are attributable to 
the passage extracted. I have met with such extracts from Mr. 
Wordsworth's poems, annexed to such assertions, as led me to 
imagine that the reviewer, having written his critique before he 
had read the work, had then pricked with a pin for passages where- 
with to illustrate the various branches of his preconceived opinions. 
By what principle of rational choice can we suppose a critic to have 
been directed (at least in a Christian country, and himself, we hope, 
a Christian) who gives the following lines, portraying the fervour 
of solitary devotion excited by the magnificent display of the 
Almighty's works, as a proof and example of an author's tendency 
to downright ravings, and absolute unintelligibility ? 

" O then what soul was his, when on the tops 
Of the high mountains he beheld the sun 
Rise up, and bathe the world in light ! He looked — 
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, 
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay 
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, 
And in their silent faces did he read 
Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drank 
The spectacle ! sensation, soul and form, 
All melted into him; they swallowed up 
His animal being; in them did he live, 
And by them did he live : they were his life." 2 

Can it be expected that either the author or his admirers should 
be induced to pay any serious attention to decisions which prove 
nothing but the pitiable state of the critic's own taste and sensi- 
bility? On opening the review they see a favourite passage, of the 
f jrce and truth of which they had an intuitive certainty in their 
own inward experience confirmed, if confirmation it could receive, 
by the sympathy of their most enlightened friends ; some of 
whom, perhaps, even in the world's opinion, hold a higher intel- 
lectual rank than the critic himself would presume to claim. And 

2 Excursion, Book I. — s. C. First lines changed later. 



518 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

this very passage they find selected as the characteristic effusion 
of a mind deserted by reason, as furnishing evidence that the writer 
was raving, or he could not have thus strung words together without 
sense or purpose ! No diversity of taste seems capable of explain- 
ing such a contrast in judgment. 

That I had over-rated the merit of a passage or poem, that I 
had erred concerning the degree of its excellence, I might be easily 
induced to believe or apprehend. But that lines, the sense of 
which I had analyzed and found consonant with all the best con- 
victions of my understanding ; and the imagery and diction of 
which had collected round those convictions my noblest as well 
as my most delightful feelings ; that I should admit such lines to 
be mere nonsense or lunacy, is too much for the most ingenious 
arguments to effect. But that such a revolution of taste should 
be brought about by a few broad assertions, seems little less than 
impossible. On the contrary, it would require an effort of charity 
not to dismiss the criticism with the aphorism of the wise man, 
in animam malevolam sapientia hand intrare potest? 

What then if this very critic should have cited a large number 
of single lines and even of long paragraphs, which he himself 
acknowledges to possess eminent and original beauty? What if 
he himself has owned that beauties as great are scattered in 
abundance throughout the whole book ? And yet, though under 
this impression, should have commenced his critique in vulgar 
exultation with a prophecy meant to secure its own fulfilment ? 
With a " This won't do ! " What? if after such acknowledgments 
extorted from his own judgment he should proceed from charge 
to charge of tameness and raving flights and flatness ; and at 
length, consigning the author to the house of incurables, should 
conclude with a strain of rudest contempt evidently grounded in 
the distempered state of his own moral associations? Suppose 
too all this done without a single leading principle established or 
even announced, and without any one attempt at argumentative 
deduction, though the poet had presented a more than usual 
3 wisdom cannot enter a malevolent soul. 



BTOGRAPHIA LITER ARIA. 519 

opportunity for it, by having previously made public his own 
principles of judgment in poetry, and supported them by a con- 
nected train of reasoning ! 

The office and duty of the poet is to select the most dignified 
as well as 

" The gayest, happiest attitude of things." * 

The reverse, for in all cases a reverse is possible, is the appro- 
priate business of burlesque and travesty, a predominant taste for 
which has been always deemed a mark of a low and degraded mind. 
When I was at Rome, among many other visits to the tomb of Julius 
II. I went thither once with a Prussian artist, a man of genius and 
great vivacity of feeling. As we were gazing on Michael Angelo's 
Moses, our conversation turned on the horns and beard of that 
stupendous statue ; of the necessity of each to support the other ; 
of the superhuman effect of the former, and the necessity of the 
existence of both to give a harmony and integrity both to the 
image and the feeling excited by it. Conceive them removed, 
and the statue would become ?;«-natural, without being super- 
natural. We called to mind the horns of the rising sun ; and I 
repeated the noble passage from Taylor's Holy Dying. That 
horns were the emblem of power and sovereignty among the 
Eastern nations, and are still retained as such in Abyssinia ; the 
Achelous of the ancient Greeks ; and the probable ideas and feel- 
ings that originally suggested the mixture of the human and the 
brute form in the figure, by which they realize the idea of their 
mysterious Pan, as representing intelligence blended with a darker 
power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the conscious 
intellect of man ; than intelligence : — all these thoughts and recol- 
lections passed in procession before our minds. My companion, 
who possessed more than his share of the hatred which his country- 
men bore to the French, had just observed to me, " A Frenchman, 
Sir, is the only animal in the human shape that by no possibility 
can lift itself up to religion and poetry : " when lo ! two French 

4 Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, Book 1, line 20. — S. C. 



520 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

officers of distinction and rank entered the church ! " Mark you," 
whispered the Prussian, " the first thing which those scoundrels 
will notice — for they will begin by instantly noticing the statue 
in parts, without one moment's pause of admiration impressed 
by the whole — will be the horns and the beard. And the asso- 
ciations which they will immediately connect with them will be 
those of a he-goat. ..." Never did man guess more luckily. Had 
he inherited a portion of the great legislator's prophetic powers, 
whose statue we had been contemplating, he could scarcely have 
uttered words more coincident with the result ; for even as he had 
said, so it came to pass. 

In The Excursion the poet has introduced an old man, born in 
humble but not abject circumstances, who had enjoyed more than 
usual advantages of education, both from books and from the more 
awful discipline of nature. This person he represents as having 
been driven by the restlessness of fervid feelings, and from a crav- 
ing intellect, to an itinerant life ; and as having in consequence 
passed the larger portion of his time, from earliest manhood, in 
villages and hamlets from door to door. 

" A vagrant Merchant bent beneath his load." 5 

Now whether this be a character appropriate to a lofty didactic 
poem, is perhaps questionable. It presents a fair subject for con- 
troversy ; and the question is to be determined by the congruity or 
incongruity of such a character with what shall be proved to be the 
essential constituents of poetry. But surely the critic who, passing 
by all the opportunities which such a mode of life would present to 
such a man ; all the advantages of the liberty of nature, of solitude, 
and of solitary thought ; all the varieties of places and seasons, 
through which his track had lain, with all the varying imagery they 
bring with them j and lastly, all the observations of men, 

" Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits, 
Their passions and their feelings, — "° 

6 Book i. — s. c. Changed later. 6 Book i. — s. c. 



BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 



521 



which the memory of these yearly journeys must have given and 
recalled to such a mind — the critic, I say, who from the multi- 
tude of possible associations should pass by all these in order to 
fix his attention exclusively on the pin-papers, and stay-tapes, 
which might have been among the wares of his pack ; this critic,' 
in my opinion, can not be thought to possess a much higher or 
much healthier state of moral feeling than the Frenchmen above 
recorded. 



XXVI. 

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

(1778-1830.) 

TABLE-TALK: OPINIONS ON BOOKS, MEN, AND THINGS. 

[Written about 1821-22.] 

Essay XIII. — On Application to Study. 

No one is idle, who can do anything. It is conscious inability, 
or the sense of repeated failure, that prevents us from undertaking, 
or deters us from the prosecution of any work. 

Wilson the painter might be mentioned as an exception to this 
rule ; for he was said to be an indolent man. After bestowing a 
few touches on a picture, he grew tired, and said to any friend 
who called in, "Now, let us go somewhere!" But the fact is, 
that Wilson could not finish his pictures minutely ; and that those 
few masterly touches, carelessly thrown in of a morning, were all 
that he could do. The rest would have been labour lost. Mor- 
land has been referred to as another man of genius, who could 
only be brought to work by fits and snatches. But his landscapes 
and figures (whatever degree of merit they might possess) were 
mere hasty sketches ; and he could produce all that he was capa- 
ble of, in the first half-hour, as well as in twenty years. Why be- 
stow additional pains without additional effect ? W r hat he did was 
from the impulse of the moment, from the lively impression of 
some coarse, but striking object ; and with that impulse his efforts 
ceased, as they justly ought. There is no use in labouring invitd 
Minerva 1 — nor any difficulty in it, when the Muse is not averse. 

1 ivhen Minerva is unwilling. 
522 



TABLE-TALK. 523 

"The labour we delight in physics pain." 

Denner finished his unmeaning portraits with a microscope, and 
without being ever weary of his fruitless task ; for the essence of 
his genius was industry. Sir Joshua Reynolds, courted by the 
Graces and by Fortune, was hardly ever out of his painting-room, 
and lamented a few days, at any time spent at a friend's house 
or at a nobleman's seat in the country, as so much time lost. That 
darkly-illuminated room " to him a kingdom was : " his pencil 
was the sceptre that he wielded, and the throne on which his 
sitters were placed, a throne for Fame. Here he felt indeed at 
home ; here the current of his ideas flowed full and strong ; here 
he felt most self-possession ; most command over others ; and the 
sense of power urged him on to his delightful task with a sort of 
vernal cheerfulness and vigour, even in the decline of life. The 
feeling of weakness and incapacity would have made his hand soon 
falter, would have rebutted him from his object ; or had the can- 
vas mocked, and been insensible to his toil, instead of gradually 
turning to 

" A lucid mirror, in which nature saw 
All her reflected features," 

he would, like so many others, have thrown down his pencil in 
despair, or proceeded reluctantly, without spirit and without suc- 
cess. Claude Lorraine, in like manner, spent whole mornings 
on the banks of the Tiber or in his study, eliciting beauty after 
beauty, adding touch to touch, getting nearer and nearer to per- 
fection, luxuriating in endless felicity — not merely giving the 
salient points, but filling up the whole intermediate space with 
continuous grace and beauty ! What farther motive was necessary 
to induce him to persevere, but the bounty of his fate? What 
greater pleasure could he seek for, than that of seeing the perfect 
image of his mind reflected in the work of his hand ? But as is 
the pleasure and the confidence produced by consummate skill, 
so is the pain and the disheartening effect of total failure. When 
for the fair face of nature we only see an unsightly blot issuing 



524 WILLIAM HAZLLTT. 

from our best endeavours, then the nerves slacken, the tears fill 
the eyes, and the painter turns away from his art, as the lover 
from a mistress that scorns him. Alas ! how many such have, as 
the poet says, 

" Begun in gladness; 
Whereof has come in the end despondency and madness — " 

not for want of will to proceed, (oh, no !) but for lack of power ! 

Hence it is that those often do best (up to a certain point of 
common-place success) who have least knowledge and least ambi- 
tion to excel. Their taste keeps pace with their capacity ; and 
they are not deterred by insurmountable difficulties, of which they 
have no idea. I have known artists (for instance) of considerable 
merit, and a certain native rough strength and resolution of mind, 
who have been active and enterprizing in their profession, but who 
never seemed to think of any works but those which they had in 
hand ; they never spoke of a picture, or appeared to have seen 
one ; to them Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Correggio, 
were as if they had never been : no tones, mellowed by time to soft 
perfection, lured them to their luckless doom, no divine forms 
baffled their vain embrace ; no sound of immortality rung in their 
ears, or drew off their attention from the calls of creditors or of 
hunger : they walked through collections of the finest works, like 
the Children in the Fiery Furnace, untouched, unapproached. 
With these true terra* filii 2 the art might be supposed to begin 
and end : they thought only of the subject of their next produc- 
tion, the size of their next canvas, the grouping, the getting in of 
the figures ; and conducted their work to its conclusion with as 
little distraction of mind and as few misgivings, as a stage-coach- 
man conducts a stage, or a carrier delivers a bale of goods, accord- 
ing to its destination. Such persons, if they do not rise above, at 
least seldom sink below themselves. They do not soar to the 
" highest Heaven of invention," nor penetrate the inmost recesses 
of the heart ; but they succeed in all that they attempt or are 

2 sons of earth, 



TABLE-TALK. 525 

capable of, as men of business and of industry in their calling. 
For them the veil of the Temple of Art is not rent asunder, and 
it is well : one glimpse of the Sanctuary, of the Holy of the Holies, 
might palsy their hands, and bedim their sight forever after ! I 
think there are two mistakes, common enough on this subject, 
viz. : That men of genius, or of first-rate capacity, do little, except 
by intermittent fits, or per saltum — and that they do that little in 
a slight and slovenly manner. There may be instances of this ; but 
they are not the highest, and they are the exceptions, not the rule. 
On the contrary, the greatest artists have in general been the most 
prolific or the most elaborate, as the best writers have been fre- 
quently the most voluminous as well as indefatigable. We have a 
great living instance among writers, that the quality of a man's 
productions is not to be estimated in the inverse ratio of their 
quantity, I mean in the Author of Waverley ; the fecundity of 
whose pen is no less admirable than its felicity. Shakespear is 
another instance of the same prodigality of genius : his materials 
being endlessly poured forth with no niggard or fastidious hand, 
and the mastery of the execution being (in many respects at least) 
equal to the boldness of the design. As one example among 
others that I might cite of the attention which he gave to his sub- 
ject, it is sufficient to observe, that there is scarcely a word in any 
of his more striking passages that can be altered for the better. 
If any person, for instance, is trying to recollect a favourite line, 
and cannot hit upon some particular expression, it is in vain to 
think of substituting any other so good. That in the original text 
is not merely the best, but it seems the only right one. I will stop 
to illustrate this point a little. I was at a loss the other day for 
the line in Henry V., 

" Nice customs curtesy to great kings." 

I could not recollect the word nice : I tried a number of others, 
such as old, grave, &c. — they would none of them do, but seemed 
all heavy, lumbering, or from the purpose : the word nice, on the 
contrary, appeared to drop into its place, and be ready to assist in 
paying the reverence due. Again, 



526 WILLIAM HAZLTTT. 

" A jest's prosperity lies in the ear 
Of him that hears it." 

I thought, in quoting from memory, of "A jest's success" "A 
jest's renown" &c. I then turned to the volume, and there found 
the very word that of all others expressed the idea. Had Shake- 
spear searched through the four quarters of the globe, he could 
not have lighted on another to convey so exactly what he meant 
— a casual, hollow, sounding success ! I could multiply such exam- 
ples, but that I am sure the reader will easily supply them himself; 
and they show sufficiently that Shakespear was not (as he is often 
represented) a loose or clumsy writer. The bold, happy texture 
of his style, in which every word is prominent, and yet cannot be 
torn from its place without violence, any more than a limb from 
the body, is (one should think) the result either of vigilant pains- 
taking, or of unerring intuitive perception, and not the mark of 
crude conceptions, or " the random, blindfold blows of ignorance." 

There cannot be a greater contradiction to the common preju- 
dice that " Genius is naturally a truant and a vagabond," tjian the 
astonishing and (on the hypothesis) unaccountable number of 
chefs-d'oeuvre left behind them by the Old Masters. The stream 
of their invention supplies the taste of successive generations like a 
river : they furnish a hundred Galleries, and preclude competition, 
not more by the excellence than by the extent of their perform- 
ances. Take Raphael and Rubens for instance. There are works 
of theirs in single Collections enough to occupy a long and labori- 
ous life, and yet their works are spread through all the Collections 
of Europe. They seem to have cost them no more labour than if 
they " had drawn in their breath and puffed it forth again." But 
we know that they made drawings, studies, sketches of all the prin- 
cipal of these, with the care and caution of the merest tyros in the 
art ; and they remain equal proofs of their capacity and diligence. 
The Cartoons of Raphael alone might have employed many years, 
and made a life of illustrious labour, though they look as if they 
had been struck off at a blow, and are not a tenth part of what he 
produced in his short but bright career. Titian and Michael 



TABLE- TALK*. 52 7 

Angelo lived longer ; but they worked as hard and did as well. 
Shall we bring in competition with examples like these some trashy 
caricaturist, or idle dauber, who has no sense of the infinite re- 
sources of nature or art, nor consequently any power to employ 
himself upon them for any length of time or to any purpose, to 
prove that genius and regular industry are incompatible qualities ? 
In my opinion, the very superiority of the works of the great 
painters (instead of being a bar to) accounts for their multiplicity. 
Power is pleasure ; and pleasure sweetens pain. A fine poet thus 
describes the effect of the sight of nature on his mind : 

"The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood. 
Their colours and their forms were then to me 
An appetite, a feeling, and a love, 
That had no need of a remoter charm 
By thought supplied, or any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye." 

So the forms of nature, or the human form divine, stood before 
the great artists of old, nor required any other stimulus to lead 
the eye to survey, or the hand to embody them, than the pleasure 
derived from the inspiration of the subject, and " propulsive force " 
of the mimic creation. The grandeur of their works was an ar- 
gument with them, not to stop short, but to proceed. They could 
have no higher excitement or satisfaction than in the exercise of 
their art and endless generation of truth and beauty. Success 
prompts to exertion ; and habit facilitates success. It is idle to 
suppose we can exhaust nature ; and the more we employ our own 
faculties, the more we strengthen them and enrich our stores of 
observation and invention. The more we do, the more we can do. 
Not indeed if we get our ideas out of our own heads —that stock 
is soon exhausted, and we recur to tiresome, vapid imitations of 
ourselves. But this is the difference between real and mock talent, 
between genius and affectation. Nature is not limited, nor does it 
become effete, like our conceit and vanity. The closer we ex- 



528 WILLIAM IIAZIITT. 

amine it, the more it refines upon us ; it expands as we enlarge 
and shift our view ; it " grows with our growth, and strengthens 
with our strength." The subjects are endless ; and our capacity is 
invigorated as it is called out by occasion and necessity. He who 
does nothing, renders himself incapable of doing anything ; but 
while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying 
ourselves to undertake another. The principles are the same in 
all nature ; and we understand them better as we verify them 
by experience and practice. It is not as if there was a given 
number of subjects to work upon, or a set of innate or pre- 
conceived ideas in our minds, which we encroached upon with 
every new design ; the subjects, as I said before, are endless, and 
we acquire ideas by imparting them. Our expenditure of intellec- 
tual wealth makes us rich ; we can only be liberal as we have previ- 
ously accumulated the means. By lying idle, as by standing still, 
we are confined to the same trite, narrow round of topics : by con- 
tinuing our efforts, as by moving forwards in a road, we extend 
our views, and discover continually new tracts of country. Genius, 
like humanity, rusts for want of use. 

Habit also gives promptness ; and the soul of dispatch is decis- 
ion. One man may write a book or paint a picture, while another 
is deliberating about the plan or the title-page. The great painters 
were able to do so much, because they knew exactly what they 
meant to do, and how to set about it. They were thorough-bred 
workmen, and were not learning their art while they were exer- 
cising it. We can do a great deal in a short time if we only know 
how. Thus an author may become very voluminous, who only 
employs an hour or two in a day in study. If he has once ob- 
tained, by habit and reflection, a use of his pen with plenty of 
materials to work upon, the pages vanish before him. The time 
lost is in beginning, or in stopping after we have begun. If we 
only go forwards with spirit and confidence, we shall soon arrive at 
the end of our journey. A practised writer ought never to hesi- 
tate for a sentence from the moment he sets pen to paper, or think 
about the course he is to take. He must trust to his previous 



TABLE-TALK. 529 

knowledge of the subject and to his immediate impulses, and he 
will get to the close of his task without accidents or loss of time. 
I can easily understand how the old divines and controversialists 
produced their folios : I could write folios myself, if I rose early 
and sat up late at this kind of occupation. But I confess I should 
be soon tired of it, besides wearying the reader. 

In one sense, art is long and life is short. In another sense, 
this aphorism is not true. The best of us are idle half our time. 
It is wonderful how much is done in a short space, provided we 
set about it properly, and give our minds wholly to it. Let any 
one devote himself to any art or science ever so strenuously, and 
he will still have leisure to make considerable progress in half a 
dozen other acquirements. Leonardo da Vinci was a mathemati- 
cian, a musician, a poet, and an anatomist, besides being one of 
the greatest painters of his age. The Prince of Painters was a 
courtier, a lover, and fond of dress and company. Michael Angelo 
was a prodigy of versatility of talent — a writer of Sonnets (which 
Wordsworth has thought worth translating) and the friend of Dante. 
Salvator was a lutenist and a satirist. Titian was an elegant letter- 
writer, and a finished gentleman. Sir Joshua Reynolds's Dis- 
courses are more polished and classical even than any of his 
pictures. Let a man do all he can in any one branch of study, he 
must either exhaust himself and doze over it, or vary his pursuit, 
or else lie idle. All our real labour lies in a nut-shell. The mind 
makes, at some period or other, one Herculean effort, and the rest 
is mechanical. We have to climb a steep and narrow precipice at 
first ; but after that, the way is broad and easy, where we may 
drive several accomplishments abreast. Men should have one 
principal pursuit, which may be both agreeably and advantageously 
diversified with other lighter ones, as the subordinate parts of a 
picture may be managed so as to give effect to the centre group. 
It has been observed by a sensible man, that the having a regular 
occupation or professional duties to attend to is no excuse for put- 
ting forth an inelegant or inaccurate work ; for a habit of industry 
braces and strengthens the mind, and enables it to wield its ener- 



530 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

gies with additional ease and steadier purpose. Were I allowed to 
instance in myself, if what I write at present is worth nothing, at 
least it costs me nothing. But it cost me a great deal twenty years 
ago. I have added little to my stock since then, and taken little 
from it. I " unfold the book and volume of the brain," and tran- 
scribe the characters I see there as mechanically as any one might 
copy the letters in a sampler. I do not say they came there 
mechanically — I transfer them to the paper mechanically. After 
eight or ten years' hard study, an author (at least) may go to 
sleep. 

I do not conceive rapidity of execution necessarily implies 
slovenliness or crudeness. On the contrary, I believe it is often 
productive both of sharpness and freedom. The eagerness of 
composition strikes out sparkles of fancy, and runs the thoughts 
more naturally and closely into one another. There may be less 
formal method, but there is more life and spirit and truth. In 
the play and agitation of the mind, it runs over, and we dally 
with the subject, as the glass-blower rapidly shapes the vitreous 
fluid. A number of new thoughts rise up spontaneously, and they 
come in the proper places, because they arise from the occasion. 
They are also sure to partake of the warmth and vividness of that 
ebullition of mind from which they spring. Spiritus precipitandus 
est? In these sort of voluntaries in composition, the thoughts are 
worked up to a sort of projection : the grasp of the subject, the 
presence of mind, the flow of expression, must be something akin 
to extempore speaking ; or perhaps such bold but finished draughts 
may be compared to fresco paintings, which imply a life of study 
and great previous preparation, but of which the execution is 
momentary and irrevocable. I will add a single remark on a 
point that has been much disputed. Mr. Cobbett lays it down 
that the first word that occurs is always the best. I would venture 
to differ from so great an authority. Mr. Cobbett himself indeed 
writes as easily and as well as he talks ; but he perhaps is hardly 
a rule for others without his practice and without his ability. In 

3 The spirit must be hurried forth. 



TABLE-TALK. 531 

the hurry of composition three or four words may present them- 
selves, one on the back of the other, and the last may be the best 
and right one. I grant thus much, that it is in vain to seek for 
the word we want, or endeavour to get at it second-hand, or as a 
paraphrase on some other word — it must come of itself, or arise 
out of an immediate impression or lively intuition of the subject ; 
that is, the proper word must be suggested immediately by the 
thought, but it need not be presented as soon as called for. It is 
the same in trying to recollect the names of places, persons, &c, 
where we cannot force our memory j they must come of themselves 
by natural association, as it were ; but they may occur to us when 
we least think of it, owing to some casual circumstance or link of 
connection, and long after we have given up the search. Proper 
expressions rise to the surface from the heat and fermentation of 
the mind, like bubbles on an agitated stream. It is this which 
produces a clear and sparkling style. 

In painting, great execution supplies the place of high finishing. 
A few vigorous touches, properly and rapidly disposed, will often 
give more of the appearance and texture (even) of natural objects 
than the most heavy and laborious details. But this masterly style 
of execution is very different from coarse daubing. I do not 
think, however, that the pains or polish an artist bestows upon his 
works necessarily interferes with their number. He only grows 
more enamoured of his task, proportionably patient, indefatigable, 
and devotes more of the day to study. The time we lose is not 
in overdoing what we are about, but in doing nothing. Rubens 
had great facility of execution, and seldom went into the details. 
Yet Raphael, whose oil-pictures were exact and laboured, achieved, 
according to the length of time he lived, very nearly as much as 
he. In filling up the parts of his pictures, and giving them the 
last perfection they were capable of, he filled up his leisure hours, 
which otherwise would have lain idle on his hands. I have some- 
times accounted for the slow progress of certain artists from the 
unfinished state in which they have left their works at last. These 
were evidently done by fits and throes — there was no appearance 



532 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

of continuous labour — one figure had been thrown in at a venture, 
and then another ; and in the intervals between these convulsive 
and random efforts, more time had been wasted than could have 
been spent in working up each individual figure on the sure prin- 
ciples of art, and by a careful inspection of nature to the utmost 
point of practicable perfection. 

Some persons are afraid of their own works ; and having made 
one or two successful efforts, attempt nothing ever after. They 
stand still midway in the road to fame, from being startled at the 
shadow of their own reputation. This is a needless alarm. If 
what they have already done possesses real power, this will in- 
crease with exercise ; if it has not this power, it is not suffi- 
cient to ensure them lasting fame. Such delicate pretenders 
tremble on the brink of ideal perfection, like dew-drops on the 
edge of flowers ; and are fascinated, like so many Narcissuses, 
with the image of themselves, reflected from the public admira- 
tion. It is seldom indeed, that this cautious repose will answer 
its end. While seeking to sustain our reputation at the height, we 
are forgotten. Shakespear gave different advice, and himself 
acted upon it. 

"... Perseverance, dear my lord, 

Keeps honour bright. To have done, is to hang 

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, 

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way, 

For honour travels in a strait so narrow, 

Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path; 

For emulation hath a thousand sons, 

That one by one pursue. If you give way, 

Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right, 

Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, 

And leave you hindmost : — 

Or like a gallant horse, fall'n in first rank. 

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, 

O'er-run and trampled. Then what they do in present, 

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours : 

For time is like a fashionable host, 

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, 



TABLE-TALK. S33 

And with his arms outstretch'd as he would fly, 

Grasps in the comer. Welcome ever smiles, 

And farewell goes out sighing. O let not virtue seek 

Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit, 

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, 

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all 

To envious and calumniating Time. 

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, 

That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, 

Though they are made and moulded of things past; 

And give to dust that is a little gilt 

More laud than gilt o'er dusted. 

The present eye praises the present object." 

Troilus and Cressida, III. 3, 150-180. 

I cannot very well conceive how it is that some writers (even of 
taste and genius) spend whole years in mere corrections for the 
press, as it were — in polishing a line or adjusting a comma. 
They take long to consider, exactly as there is nothing worth the 
trouble of a moment's thought ; and the more they deliberate, the 
farther they are from deciding : for their fastidiousness increases 
with the indulgence of it, nor is there any real ground for prefer- 
ence. They are in the situation of Ned Softly in the Tatler, who 
was a whole morning debating whether a line of poetical epistle 
should run — 

" You sing your song with so much art;" 

or 

" Your song you sing with so much art." 

These are points that it is impossible ever to come to a determi- 
nation about ; and it is only a proof of a little mind ever to have 
entertained the question at all. 

There is a class of persons whose minds seem to move in an 
element of littleness ; or rather, that are entangled in trifling 
difficulties, and incapable of extricating themselves from them. 
There was a remarkable instance of this improgressive, ineffectual, 
restless activity of temper in a late celebrated and very ingenious 
landscape-painter. " Never ending, still beginning," his mind 



534 WILLIAM IIAZLITT. 

seemed entirely made up of points and fractions, nor could he by 
any means arrive at a conclusion or a valuable whole. He made 
it his boast that he never sat with his hands before him, and yet he 
never did anything. His power and his time were frittered away 
in an unfortunate, uneasy, fidgetty attention to little things. The 
first picture he ever painted (when a mere boy) was a copy of 
his father's house ; and he began it by counting the number of 
bricks in the front upwards and lengthways, and then made a scale 
of them on his canvas. This literal style and mode of study stuck 
to him to the last. He was placed under Wilson, whose example 
(if anything could) might have cured him of this pettiness of con- 
ception ; but nature prevailed, as it almost always does. To take 
pains to no purpose, seemed to be his motto, and the delight of 
his life. He left (when he died, not long ago) heaps of canvasses 
with elaborately finished pencil outlines on them, and with perhaps 
a little dead colouring added here and there. In this state they 
were thrown aside, as if he grew tired of his occupation the in- 
stant it gave a promise of turning to account, and his whole object 
in the pursuit of art was to erect scaffoldings. The same intense 
interest in the most frivolous things extended to the common con- 
cerns of life, to the arranging of his letters, the labelling of his 
books, and the inventory of his wardrobe. Yet he was a man of 
sense, who saw the folly and the waste of time in all this, and 
could warn others against it. The perceiving our own weaknesses 
enables us to give others excellent advice, but it does not teach us 
to reform them ourselves. " Physician, heal thyself," is the hard- 
est lesson to follow. Nobody knew better than our artist that 
repose is necessary to great efforts, and that he who is never idle, 
labours in vain ! 

Another error is to spend one's life in procrastination and prep- 
arations for the future. Persons of this turn of mind stop at the 
threshold of art, and accumulate the means of improvement, 
till they obstruct their progress to the end. They are always 
putting off the evil day and excuse themselves for doing nothing 
by commencing some new and indispensable course of study. 



TABLE-TALK. 535 

Their projects are magnificent, but remote, and require years to 
complete or to put them in execution. Fame is seen in the hori- 
zon, and flies before them. Like the recreant boastful knight in 
Spenser, they turn their backs on their competitors to make a 
great career, but never return to the charge. They make them- 
selves masters of anatomy, of drawing, of perspective ; they 
collect prints, casts, medallions, make studies of heads, of hands, 
of the bones, the muscles ; copy pictures ; visit Italy, Greece, 
and return as they went. They fulfil the proverb, " When you 
are at Rome, you must do as those at Rome do." This circu- 
itous, erratic pursuit of art can come to no good. It is only an 
apology for idleness and vanity. Foreign travel especially makes 
men pedants, not artists. What we seek, we must find at home, 
or nowhere. The way to do great things is to set about some- 
thing, and he who cannot find resources in himself or in his own 
painting-room, will perform the Grand Tour, or go through the 
circle of the arts and sciences, and end just where he began ! 

The same remarks that have been here urged with respect to 
an application to the study of art, will in a great measure (though 
not in every particular,) apply to an attention to business : I 
mean, that exertion will generally follow success and opportunity 
in the one, as it does confidence and talent in the other. Give a 
man a motive to work, and he will work. A lawyer who is regu- 
larly feed, seldom neglects to look over his briefs : the more 
business, the more industry. The stress laid upon early rising is 
preposterous. If we have anything to do when we get up, we 
shall not lie in bed, to a certainty. Thomson the poet was found 
late in bed by Dr. Burney, and asked why he had not risen earlier. 
The Scotchman wisely answered, "I had no motive, young man ! " 
What, indeed, had he to do after writing the Seasons, but to 
dream out the rest of his existence, or employ it in writing the 
Castle of Indolence ! 4 

4 School-boys attend to their tasks as soon as they acquire a relish for 
study, and they apply to that for which they find they have a capacity. — 
From Hazlitt's Note, 



XXVII. 

CHARLES LAMB. 

(1775-1834.) 

THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 

[Written in 1821-1826.] 

i. The Old and the New Schoolmaster. 1 

My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethodical. 
Odd, out of the way, old English plays and treatises, have sup- 
plied me with most of my notions and ways of feeling. In 
everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia 
behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure 
among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's days. 
I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks' standing. 
To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do 
not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; whether Ethiopia 
lie in one or other of those great divisions ; nor can form the 
remotest conjecture of the position of New South Wales, or Van 
Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very 
dear friend in the first-named of these two Terras Incognitae. I 
have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear, or 
Charles's Wain ; the place of any star ; or the name of any of 
them at sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness — and if 
the sun on some portentous morn were to make his first appear- 
ance in the West, I verily believe that, while all the world were 
gasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, 
from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history and 

1 From The London Magazine, May, 1 821. 
536 



THE ESSAYS OE EL/A. 537 

chronology I possess some vague points, such as one cannot help 
picking up in the course of miscellaneous study; but I never 
deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. 
I have most dim apprehensions of the four great monarchies ; 
and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first 
in my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, 
and her shepherd kings. My friend M., with great painstaking, 
got me to think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but 
gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely unac- 
quainted with the modern languages ; and, like a better man than 
myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to 
the shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers — 
not from the circumstance of my being town-born — for I should 
have brought the same inobservant spirit into the world with me, 
had I first seen it "on Devon's leafy shores," — and am no less 
at a loss among purely town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic 
processes. — Not that I affect ignorance — but my head has not 
many mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill it 
with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without aching. I 
sometimes wonder, how I have passed my probation with so little 
discredit in the world, as I have done, upon so meagre a stock. 
But the fact is, a man may do very well with a very little knowl- 
edge, and scarce be found out, in mixed company ; everybody is 
so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a dis- 
play of your acquisitions. But in a tete-a- tete there is no shuffling. 
The truth will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, 
as the being left alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, 
well-informed man, that does not know me. I lately got into a 
dilemma of this sort. — 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and Shacklewell, 
the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the 
wrong side of thirty, who was giving his parting directions (while 
the steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall 
youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, 
but something partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, 



538 CHARLES LAMB. 

and we drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he naturally 
enough addressed his conversation to me ; and we discussed the 
merits of the fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver ; the 
circumstance of an opposition coach having been lately set up, 
with the probabilities of its success — to all which I was enabled 
to return pretty satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this 
kind of etiquette by some years' daily practice of riding to and 
fro in the stage aforesaid — when he suddenly alarmed me by a 
startling question, whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that 
morning in Smithfield? Now as I had not seen it, and do not 
greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a 
cold negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, 
at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh from 
the sight, and doubtless had hoped to compare notes on the sub- 
ject. However he assured me that I had lost a fine treat, as it 
far exceeded the show of last year. We were now approaching 
Norton Folgate, when the sight of some shop-goods ticketed 
freshened him up into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons 
this spring. I was now a little in heart, as the nature of my 
morning avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity 
with the raw material ; and I was surprised to find how eloquent 
I was becoming on the state of the India market — when, presently, 
he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by inquiring 
whether I had ever made any calculation as to the value of the 
rental of all the retail shops in London. Had he asked of me, 
what song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when 
he hid himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, 
have hazarded a " wide solution." 2 My companion saw my em- 
barrassment, and, the almshouses beyond Shoreditch just coming 
in view, with great good-nature and dexterity shifted his conversa- 
tion to the subject of public charities ; which led to the compara- 
tive merits of provision for the poor in past and present times, 
with observations on the old monastic institutions, and charitable 
orders; — but, finding me rather dimly impressed with some 

2 Urn Burial. See ante, p. 170. 



THE ESSAYS OF EL/A. 539 

glimmering notions from old poetic associations, than strongly 
fortified with any speculations reducible to calculation on the sub- 
ject, he gave the matter up ; and, the country beginning to open 
more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike at Kings- 
land (the destined termination of his journey), he put a home 
thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position he could have 
chosen, by advancing some queries relative to the North Pole 
Expedition. While I was muttering out something about the 
Panorama of those strange regions (which I had actually seen), 
by way of parrying the question, the coach stopping relieved me 
from any further apprehensions. My companion getting out, left 
me in the comfortable possession of my ignorance ; and I heard 
him, as he went off, putting questions to an outside passenger, 
who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder that 
had been rife about Dalston, and which, my friend assured him, 
had gone through five or six schools in that neighbourhood. The 
truth now flashed upon me, that my companion was a school- 
master ; and that the youth, whom he had parted from at our first 
acquaintance, must have been one of the bigger boys, or the 
usher. — He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who did not seem 
so much desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which 
he put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not appear 
that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inquiries, for 
their own sake ; but that he was in some way bound to seek for 
knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, which he had on, forbade 
me to surmise that he was a clergyman. The adventure gave birth 
to some reflections on the difference between persons of his pro- 
fession in past and present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues ; the breed, long 
since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres : who, believing that 
all learning was contained in the languages which they taught, and 
despising every other acquirement as superficial and useless, came 
to their task as to a sport ! Passing from infancy to age, they 
dreamed away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolv- 
ing in a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, 



540 CHARLES LAMB. 

and prosodies ; renewing constantly the occupations which had 
charmed their studious childhood ; rehearsing continually the part 
of the past; life must have slipped from them at last like one day. 
They were always in their first garden, reaping harvests of their 
golden time, among their Flori- and their Spici-kgia? in Arcadia 
still, but kings ; the ferule of their sway not much harsher, but of 
like dignity with that mild sceptre attributed to King Basileus ; 
the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philoclea ; 
with the occasional duncery of some untoward Tyro, serving for a 
refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damcetas ! 

With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as it is 
sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth ! " To exhort every 
man to the learning of grammar, that intendeth to attain the un- 
derstanding of the tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury 
of wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labour ; 
for so much as it is known, that nothing can surely be ended, 
whose beginning is either feeble or faulty ; and no building be 
perfect, whereas the foundation and ground-work is ready to fall, 
and unable to uphold the burden of the frame." How well doth 
this stately preamble (comparable to those which Milton com- 
mendeth as " having been the usage to prefix to some solemn law, 
then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus") correspond with 
and illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a suc- 
ceeding clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with the 
severity of faith articles ! — " as for the diversity of grammars, it 
is well profitably taken away by the kings majesties wisdom, who, 
foreseeing the inconvenience, and favourably providing the rerae- 
die, caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be 
diligently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to be taught 
for the use of learners, and for the hurt in changing of school- 
masters." What a gusto in that which follows: "wherein it is 
profitable that he [the pupil] can orderly decline his noun, and 
his verb." His noun ! 

3 Collections of flowers and fruits. 



THE ESSA YS OF ELIA. 541 

The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least concern of a 
teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar- rules. 

The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of every- 
thing, because his pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant of 
anything. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. 
He is to know something of pneumatics ; of chemistry ; of what- 
ever is curious, or proper to excite the attention of the youthful 
mind; an insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of 
statistics ; the quality of soils, &c. ; botany ; the constitution of 
his country, cum muMs aliis. 4 You may get a notion of some 
part of his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on 
Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib. 5 

All these things — these, or the desire of them — he is expected 
to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he may charge 
in the bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or 
saunters through green fields (those natural instructors) with his 
pupils. The least part of what is expected from him is to be done 
in school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the mollia tem- 
porafandi? He must seize every occasion — the season of the 
year— the time of the day — a passing cloud — a rainbow — a 
waggon of hay — a regiment of soldiers going by — to inculcate 
something useful. He can receive no pleasure from a casual 
glimpse of nature, but must catch at it as an object of instruction. 
He must interpret beauty into the picturesque. He cannot relish 
a beggar-man, or a gypsy, for thinking of the suitable improve- 
ment. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the unsophisticating 
medium of moral uses. The Universe — that Great Book, as it 
has been called — is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, 
a book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to 
distasting schoolboys. Vacations themselves are none to him, he 
is only rather worse off than before ; for commonly he has some 
intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times : some cadet 
of a great family j some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry ; 

4 with many other things. 

6 Milton's Letter on Education. 6 su i ta M e t i me s of speaking. 



542 CHARLES LAMB. 

that he must drag after him to the play, to the panorama, to Mr. 
Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a 
friend's house, or his favourite watering-place. Wherever he goes, 
this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in 
his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of per- 
petual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates ; 
but they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The 
restraint is felt no less on the one side, than on the other. — Even 
a child, that " plaything for an hour," " tires always. The noises 
of children, playing their own fancies — as I now hearken to them 
by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am en- 
gaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at 
Shacklewell — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly take 
from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music. They 
seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so — 
for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far 
unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's conversation. — I should 
but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by 
mingling in their pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of very 
superior capacity to my own — not, if I know myself at all, from 
any considerations of jealousy, or self-comparison, for the occa- 
sional communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and 
felicity of my life — but the habit of too constant intercourse with 
spirits above you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too 
frequent doses of original thinking from others, restrain what lesser 
portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You get 
entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose yourself in 
another man's grounds. You are walking with a tall varlet, whose 
strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The constant operation of 
such potent agency would reduce me, I am convinced, to imbecil- 
ity. You may derive thoughts from others ; your way of thinking, 

7 " One of Lamb's quotations from himself. The phrase occurs in a charm- 
ing poem of three stanzas, in the Poetry for Children.''' 1 — AlNGER. 



THE ESSAYS OF EL/A. 543 

the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. 
Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual frame. 

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, as 
little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards 
by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its 
loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility. 

Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a school- 
master ? — because we are conscious that he is not quite at his 
ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of 
his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, 
and he cannot fit the .stature of his understanding to yours. He 
cannot meet you on the square. He wants a point given him, like 
an indifferent whist-player. He is so used to teaching, that he 
wants to be teaching you. One of these professors, upon my 
complaining that these little sketches of mine were anything but 
methodical, and that I was unable to make them otherwise, kindly 
offered to instruct me in the method by which young gentlemen 
in his seminary were taught to compose English themes. — The 
jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They do not tell out 
of school. He is under the restraint of a formal and didactive 
hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one. He 
can no more let his intellect loose in society, than the other can 
his inclinations. — He is forlorn among his co-evals ; his juniors 
cannot be his friends. 

" I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profession, 
writing to a friend respecting a youth who had quitted his school 
abruptly, " that your nephew was not more attached to me. But 
persons in my situation are more to be pitied, than can well be 
imagined. We are surrounded by young, and, consequently, 
ardently affectionate hearts, but we can never hope to share an 
atom of their affections. The relation of master and scholar for- 
bids this. How pleasing this must be to you, how I envy your 
feelings, my friends will sometimes say to me, when they see young 
men, whom I have educated, return after some years' absence 
from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, while they shake 



544 CHARLES LAMB. 

hands with their old master, bringing a present of game to me, or 
a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms for my 
care of their education. A holiday is begged for the boys ; the 
house is a scene of happiness; I, only, am sad at heart. — This 
fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he repays his 
master with gratitude for the care of his boyish years — this young 
man — in the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's 
anxiety, never could repay me with one look of genuine feeling. 
He was proud, when I praised ; he was submissive, when I re- 
proved him ; but he did never love me — and what he now mis- 
takes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but a pleasant sensation, 
which all persons feel at revisiting the scene of their boyish hopes 
and fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the man they were 
accustomed to look up to with reverence. My wife, too," this 
interesting correspondent goes on to say, " my once darling Anna, 
is the wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married her — knowing 
that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable creature, 
and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss of my 
dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still, was in 
every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged 
sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save her from 
fatiguing herself to death — I expressed my fears, that I was 
bringing her into a way of life unsuitable to her ; and she, who 
loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to per- 
form the duties of her new situation. She promised, and she has 
kept her word. What wonders will not a woman's love perform ? 
— My house is managed with a propriety and decorum, unknown 
in other schools ; my boys are well-fed, look healthy, and have 
every proper accommodation ; and all this performed with a care- 
ful economy, that never descends to meanness. But I have lost 
my gentle, helpless Anna ! — When we sit down to enjoy an hour 
of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen to 
what have been her useful (and they are really useful) employ- 
ments through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's 
task. Her heart and her features are changed bv the duties of her 






THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 545 

situation. To the boys, she never appears other than the master's 
wife, and she looks up to me as the boys' master ; to whom all 
show of love and affection would be highly improper, and unbe- 
coming the dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this my 
gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For my sake she submitted 
to be this altered creature, and can I reproach her for it ? [These 
kind of complaints are not often drawn from me. I am aware 
that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous man." My feelings 
prevent me from transcribing any further.] — For the communica- 
tion of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget. 



2. A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married 

People. 8 

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in not- 
ing down the infirmities of Married People to console myself for 
those superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by remain- 
ing as I am. 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever 
made any great impression upon me, or had much tendency to 
strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions, which I took up 
long ago upon more substantial considerations. What oftenest 
offends me at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an 
error of quite a different description ; — it is that they are too 
loving. 

Not too loving neither : that does not explain my meaning. 
Besides, why should that offend me ? The very act of separating 
themselves from the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoy- 
ment of each other's society, implies that they prefer one another 
to all the world. 

8 From The London Magazine, September, 1822. —This paper, eleven years 
prior to its reissue as one of the Elian essays in the London, appeared (in 
181 1) in No. 4 of Leigh Hunt's Reflector. Upon the occasion of its repub- 
lication in the Magazine it was subscribed "your humble servant Elia." — 
MORLEY. 



546 CHARLES LAMB. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so 
undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so 
shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without 
being made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you 
are not the object of this preference. Now there are some things 
which give no offence, while implied or taken for granted merely ; 
but expressed, there is much offence in them. If a man were to 
accost the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of 
his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome 
or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her, he would 
deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet no less is implied in 
the fact, that having access and opportunity of putting the question 
to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. The young woman 
understands this as clearly as if it were put into words : but no 
reasonable young woman would think of making this the ground 
of a quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell me 
by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, 
that I am not the happy man, — the lady's choice. It is enough 
that I know I am not ; I do not want this perpetual reminding. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made suf- 
ficiently mortifying ; but these admit of a palliative. The knowl- 
edge which is brought out to insult me, may accidently improve 
me ; and in the rich man's houses and pictures, — his parks and 
gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the display 
of married happiness has none of these palliatives ; it is through- 
out pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult. 

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least 
invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of any exclu- 
sive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as 
possible, that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the 
benefit, may the less be disposed to question the right. But these 
married monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent 
into our faces. 

Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency 
and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new married 



THE ESSA YS OF ELIA. 547 

couple, — in that of the lady particularly : it tells you, that her lot 
is disposed of in this world ; that you can have no hopes of her. 
It is true, I have none ; nor wishes either, perhaps : but this is 
one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for 
granted, not expressed. 

The excessive airs which those people give themselves, founded 
on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be more offensive 
if they were less irrational. We will allow them to understand the 
mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we who have not 
had the happiness to be made free of the company : but their 
arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single person 
presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the 
most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompe- 
tent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, 
who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her condition above 
a fortnight before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to 
differ from her, respecting the properest mode of breeding oysters 
for the London market, had the assurance to ask, with a sneer, 
how such an old Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything 
about such matters. 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which 
these creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally 
do, to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity chil- 
dren are, — that every street and blind alley swarms with them, — 
that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance, 
— that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one 
of these bargains, — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the 
fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end 
in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c. — I cannot for my life tell 
what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If 
they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a 
year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common — 

I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume with their 
husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why 
we, who are not their natural-bom subjects, should be expected 



548 CHARLES LAMB. 

to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense, — our tribute and homage 
of admiration, — I do not see. 

" Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the 
young children " ; so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book 
appointed for the churching of women. " Happy is the man that 
4 hath his quiver full of them " : so say I ; but then don't let him 
discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless ; — let them be 
arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed 
that these arrows are double-headed : they have two forks, to be 
sure to hit with one or the other. As for instance, where you 
come into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take 
no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, 
and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down 
as untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, 
if you find them more than usually engaging, if you are taken with 
their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play 
with them, some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending 
them out of the room : they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. 

does not like children. With one or other of these forks 

the arrow is sure to hit you. 

I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with 
their brats, if it gives them pain ; but I think it unreasonable to 
be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion, — to love a 
whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately, — to 
love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging. 

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my dog " ; 9 that is 
not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon 
you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser 
thing, — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a 
ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend 
went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because 
I love him, and anything that reminds me of him ; provided it be 
in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can 
give it. But children have a real character and essential being of 

9 See Lamb's Popular Fallacies, No. X. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. 549 

themselves : they are amiable or unamiable per se ; I must love or 
hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's 
nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a 
mere appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated 
accordingly : they stand with me upon their own stock, as much 
as men and women do. O ! but you will say, sure it is an attrac- 
tive age, — there is something in the tender years of infancy that 
of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice 
about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in 
nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them ; 
but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that 
it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from 
another in glory ; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest. 
— I was always rather squeamish in my women and children. 

But this is not the worst : one must be admitted into their famil- 
iarity, at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies 
visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a 
man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before mar- 
riage, — if you did not come in on the wife's side, — if you did 
not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in 
fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as 
thought on, — look about you — your tenure is precarious — before 
a twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall find your old 
friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last 
seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married 
friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose 
friendship did not commence after the period of his marriage. 
With some limitations they can endure that : but that the good 
man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship 
in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they 
knew him, — before they that are now man and wife ever met, — 
this is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, every old authen- 
tic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped 
with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old 
money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought 



550 CHARLES LAMB. 

of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, 
before he will let it pass current in the world. You may guess 
what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in 
these new tnintings. 

Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm 
you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all you say 
with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that 
said good things, but an oddity, is one of the ways ; — they have a 
particular kind of stare for the purpose ; — till at last the husband, 
who used to defer to your judgment, and would pass over some 
excrescences of understanding and manner for the sake of a gen- 
eral vein of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in 
you, begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a humourist, 
— a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor days, 
but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be 
called the staring way ; and is that which has oftenest been put in 
practice against me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony : that 
is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their 
husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attach- 
ment founded on esteem, which he has conceived towards you, 
by never-qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, 
till the good man, who understands well enough that it is all done 
in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude 
which is due to so much candour, and by relaxing a little on his 
part, and taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at 
length to that kindly level of moderate esteem, — that " decent 
affection and complacent kindness " towards you, where she herself 
can join in sympathy with him without much stretch and violence 
to her sincerity. 

Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desirable 
a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, con- 
tinually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond 
of you. If an esteem for something excellent in your moral 
character was that which riveted the chain which she is to break, 



THE ESS A YS OF ELIA. 551 

upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your con- 
versation, she will cry, " I thought, my dear, you described your 

friend, Mr. , as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for 

some supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to 
like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling irreg- 
ularities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of any 
of these she as readily exclaims, "This, my dear, is your good 
Mr. ." One good lady, whom I took the liberty of expostulat- 
ing with for not showing me quite so much respect as I thought due 
to her husband's old friend, had the candour to confess to me that 

she had often heard Mr. speak of me before marriage, and 

that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, 
but that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expecta- 
tions ; for from her husband's representations of me, she had 
formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-looking man 
(I use her very words) ; the very reverse of which proved to be 
the truth. This was candid ; and I had the civility not to ask her 
in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal 
accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much 
from his own ; for my friend's dimensions as near as possible 
approximate to mine ; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in 
which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch ; and he 
no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial char- 
acter in his air or countenance. 

These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered 
in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them 
all would be a vain endeavour : I shall therefore just glance at 
the very common impropriety of which married ladies are guilty, — 
of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice versa. I 
mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with 
ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or 
three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fret- 
ting because Mr. did not come home till the oysters were all 

spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of 
touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good 



552 CHARLES LAMB. 

manners : for ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy 
feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the 
object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other 
person is. It endeavours to , make up, by superior attentions in 
little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to 
deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, 
and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she 
would have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I 
know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their hus- 
bands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour and decorum : 
therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, 
who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was 
applying to with great good will, to her husband at the other 
end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary 
gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can 

I excuse the wanton affront of . 

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by 
Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their man- 
ners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their names 
to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future. 



3. The Genteel Style in Writing. 10 

It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftesbury, 11 and Sir 
William Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing. We 
should prefer saying — of the lordly, and the gentlemanly. 
Nothing can be more unlike than the inflated finical rhapsodies of 
Shaftesbury, and the plain natural chit-chat of Temple. The man 

10 From The New Monthly Magazine, March, 1826. Printed among The 
Last Essays of Elia. — When this paper was originally published in the New 
Monthly, it appeared as the fourteenth of the Popular Fallacies, under the 
heading " That my Lord Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple are models of 
the Genteel Style of Writing." — Morley. 

11 Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and author of the 
Characteristics. 



THE ESSA YS OF ELIA. 553 

of rank is discernible in both writers : but in the one it is only 
insinuated gracefully, in the other it stands out offensively. The 
peer seems to have written with his coronet on, and the Earl's 
mantle before him ; the commoner in his elbow chair and un- 
dressed. — What can be more pleasant than the way in which the 
retired statesman peeps out in the essays, penned by the latter in 
his delightful retreat at Shene? They scent of Nimeguen, and 
the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambassador. 
Don Francisco de Melo, a " Portugal Envoy in England," tells him 
it was frequent in his country for men, spent with age or other 
decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or two of life, 
to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their arrival 
there to go on a great length, sometimes for twenty or thirty years, 
or more, by the force of that vigour they recovered with that 
remove. "Whether such an effect" (Temple beautifully adds) 
" might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, or by 
approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of light and 
heat, when their natural heat was so far decayed : or whether the 
piecing out of an old man's life were worth the pains ; I cannot 
tell: perhaps the play is not worth the candle." — Monsieur 
Pompone, " French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) time at the 
Hague," certifies him, that in his life he had never heard of any 
man in France that arrived at a hundred years of age ; a limita- 
tion of life which the old gentleman imputes to the excellence of 
their climate, giving them such a liveliness of temper and humour, 
as disposes them to more pleasures of all kinds than in other 
countries ; and moralizes upon the matter very sensibly. The 
" late Robert Earl of Leicester " furnishes him with a story of a 
Countess of Desmond, married out of England in Edward the 
Fourth's time, and who lived far in King James's reign. The 
" same noble person " gives him an account, how such a year, in 
the same reign, there went about the country a set of morrice- 
dancers, 12 composed of ten men who danced, a Maid Marian, and 

\ 12 See Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, Illustration III. p. 576, for an 
account of the morris-dance. 



554 CHARLES LAMB. 

a tabor and pipe ; and how these twelve, one with another, made 
up twelve hundred years. " It was not so much" (says Temple) 
"that so many in one small county (Herefordshire) should live to 
that age, as that they should be in vigour and in humour to travel 
and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " colleagues at 
the Hague," informs him of a cure for the gout ; which is con- 
firmed by another " Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that town, 
who had tried it. — Old Prince Maurice of Nassau recommends to 
him the use of hammocks in that complaint ; having been allured 
to sleep, while suffering under it himself, by the " constant motion 
or swinging of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and the Rhine- 
grave, who " was killed last summer before Maestricht," impart to 
him their experiences. 

But the rank of the writer is never more innocently disclosed, 
than where he takes for granted the compliments paid by foreigners 
to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfection of what we esteem 
the best, he can truly say, that the French, who have eaten his 
peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have generally 
concluded that the last are as good as any they have eaten in 
France on this side Fontainebleau ; and the first as good as any 
they have eat in Gascony. Italians have agreed his white figs to 
be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind 
of white fig there ; for in the latter kind and the blue, we cannot 
come near the warm climates, no more than in the Frontignac or 
Muscat grape. His orange trees, too, are as large as any he saw 
when he was young in France, except those of Fontainebleau, or 
what he has seen in the Low Countries ; except some very old 
ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes he had the honour of 
bringing over four sorts into England, which he enumerates, and 
supposes that they are all by this time pretty common among some 
gardeners in his neighbourhood, as well as several persons of 
quality ; for he ever thought all things of this kind " the com- 
moner they are made the better." The garden pedantry with 
which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant any of the bes^t 
fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond Northamp- 



THE ESSAYS OF ELI A. §55 

tonshire at the farthest northwards ; and praises the " Bishop of 
Munster at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in 
that cold climate ; is equally pleasant and in character. " I may 
perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden Essay with a passage 
worthy of Cowley) " be allowed to know something of this trade, 
since I have so long allowed myself to be good for nothing else, 
which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often look- 
ing abroad to see how other matters play, what motions in the 
state, and what invitations they may hope for into other scenes. 
For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it more 
particularly, were the inclination of my youth itself, so they are 
the pleasure of my age \ and I can truly say that, among many 
great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked 
or sought for any of them, but have often endeavoured to escape 
from them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a 
man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths 
and circles of life. The measure of choosing well is whether a 
man likes what he has chosen, which I thank God has befallen me ; 
and though among the follies of my life, building and planting 
have not been the least, and have cost me more than I have the 
confidence to own ; yet they have been fully recompensed by the 
sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolu- 
tion taken of never entering again into any public employments, I 
have passed five years without ever once going to town, though I 
am almost in sight of it, and have a house there always ready to 
receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some 
have thought it, but a mere want of desire or humour to make so 
small a remove ; for when I am in this corner, I can truly say with 
Horace, Me quo He s reficit, &c. 13 

" ' Me when the cold Digentian stream revives, 
What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 

13 Horace, Epistles, I. 18, 94-102. 



556 CHARLES LAMB. 

May I have books enough, and one year's store, 
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, 
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away.' " 

The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy copy. 
On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordinate to 
nature and tenderness, has seduced him into a string of felicitous 
antitheses : which, it is obvious to remark, have been a model to 
Addison and succeeding essayists. " Who would not be covetous, 
and with reason," he says, "if health could be purchased with 
gold ? who not ambitious if it were at the command of power, or 
restored by honour? but, alas ! a white staff will not help gouty 
feet to walk better than a common cane ; nor a blue riband bind 
up a wound so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold or of diamonds 
will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing them ; and an aching 
head will be no more eased by wearing a crown, than a common 
night cap." In a far better style, and more accordance with his 
own humour of plainness, are the concluding sentences of his 
" Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part in the controversy 
about the ancient and the modern learning ; and, with that partiality 
so natural and so graceful in an old man, whose state engagements 
had left him little leisure to look into modern productions, while 
his retirement gave him occasion to look back upon the classic 
studies of his youth — decided in favour of the latter. " Certain 
it is," he says, "that, whether the fierceness of the Gothic humours, 
or noise of their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that the un- 
equal mixture of the modern languages would not bear it — the 
great heights and excellency both of poetry and music fell with 
the Roman learning and empire, and have never since recovered 
the admiration and applauses that before attended them. Yet, 
such as they are amongst us, they must be confessed to be the 
softest and sweetest, the most general and most innocent amuse- 
ments of common time and life. They still find room in the 
courts of princes, and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to 
revive and animate the dead calm of poor and idle lives, and to 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 557 

allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest 
and the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal use to 
human life ; for the mind of man is like the sea, which is neither 
agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, 
but is so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and so the 
mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or affections. I 
know very well that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of 
being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music, as toys and 
trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But 
whoever find themselves wholly insensible to their charms, would, 
I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of reproaching 
their own temper, and bringing the goodness of their natures, if 
not of their understandings, into question. While this world lasts, 
I doubt not but the pleasure and request of these two entertain- 
ments will do so too ; and happy those that content themselves 
with these, or any other so easy and so innocent, and do not 
trouble the world or other men, because they cannot be quiet 
themselves, though nobody hurts them." "When all is done" 
(he concludes), "human life is at the greatest and the best but 
like a froward child, that must be played with, and humoured a 
little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is 



14 Temple's four essays quoted by Lamb, namely, Of Gardening, Of Health 
and Long Life, The Cure of the Gout by Moxa, and Of Poetry, will be found 
in Vol. III. of his Works, London, 1814. 



XXVIII. 
ROBERT SOUTHEY. 

(1774-1843.) 

SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 

[Written about 1835.] 

Chapter VI. P. I. — A Collection of Books none of which 
are Included amongst the Publications of any Society for 
the Promotion of Knowledge, Religious or Profane. — 
Happiness in Humble Life. 

Happily for Daniel, 1 he lived before the age of Magazines, 
Reviews, Cyclopaedias, Elegant Extracts, and Literary Newspapers, 
so that he gathered the fruit of knowledge for himself, instead of 
receiving it from the dirty fingers of a retail vender. His books 
were few in number, but they were all weighty either in matter or 
in size. They consisted of the Morte d'Arthur in the fine black- 
letter edition of Copeland ; Plutarch's Morals and Pliny's Natural 
History, two goodly folios, full as an egg of meat, and both trans- 
lated by that old worthy Philemon, who for the service which he 
rendered to his contemporaries and to his countrymen deserves to 
be called the best of the Hollands, without disparaging either the 
Lord or the Doctor of that appellation ; the whole works of 
Joshua Sylvester (whose name, let me tell the reader in passing, was 
accented upon the first syllable by his contemporaries, not as now 

1 Daniel Dove, Sr., father of "The Doctor"; for, according to Southey, 
" Daniel, the son of Daniel Dove, and of Dinah his wife, was born near Ingle- 
ton, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on Monday, the twenty-second of April, 
old style, 1723, nine minutes and three seconds after three in the afternoon." 

55 s 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. $59 

upon the second) ; — Jean Petit's History of the Netherlands, 
translated and continued by Edward Grimestone, another worthy 
of the Philemon order ; Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses ; Stowe's 
Chronicle ; Joshua Barnes's Life of Edward III. ; Ripley Revived, 
by Eirenaeus Philalethes, an Englishman styling himself " Citizen 
of the World," with its mysterious frontispiece representing the 
Do?fius Naturce, to which Nil deest, nisi clavis- ; the Pilgrim's 
Progress ; two volumes of Ozell's translation of Rabelais ; Latimer's 
Sermons ; and the last volume of Fox's Martyrs, which latter book 
had been brought him by his wife. The Pilgrim's Progress was a 
godmother's present to his son ; the odd volumes of Rabelais he 
had picked up at Kendal at a sale, in a lot with Ripley Revived 
and the Plutarch's Morals : the others he had inherited. 

Daniel had looked into all these books, read most of them, and 
believed all that he read, except Rabelais, which he could not tell 
what to make of. He was not, however, one of those persons who 
complacently suppose everything to be nonsense, which they do 
not perfectly comprehend, or natter themselves that they do. His 
simple heart judged of books by what they ought to be, little know- 
ing what they are. It never occurred to him that any thing would 
be printed which was not worth printing, any thing which did hot 
convey either reasonable delight or useful instruction ; and he was 
no more disposed to doubt the truth of what he read, than to 
question the veracity of his neighbour, or any one who had no in- 
terest in deceiving him. A book carried with it to him authority 
in its very aspect. The Morte d'Arthur therefore he received for 
authentic history just as he did the painful chronicle of honest John 
Stowe, and the Barnesian labours of Joshua the self-satisfied : 
there was nothing in it indeed which stirred his English blood like 
the battles of Cressy and Poictiers and Najara ; yet on the whole 
he preferred it to Barnes's story, believed in Sir Tor, Sir Tristram, 
Sir Lancelot, and Sir Lamorack as entirely as in Sir John Chandos, 
the Capital de Buche and the Black Prince, and liked them 
better. 

2 the House of Nature, to which nothing is wanting except a key. 



560 ROBERT SOU THEY. 

Latimer and Du Bartas 3 he used sometimes to read aloud on 
Sundays ; and if the departed take cognizance of what passes on 
earth, and poets derive any satisfaction from the posthumous ap- 
plause which is generally the only reward of those who deserve it, 
Sylvester might have found some compensation for the undeserved 
neglect into which his works had sunk, by the full and devout 
delight which his rattling rhymes and quaint' collections afforded 
to this reader. The silver-tongued Sylvester, however, was reserved 
for a Sabbath-book ; as a week-day author Daniel preferred Pliny, 
for the same reason that bread and cheese, or a rasher of hung 
mutton, contented his palate better than a syllabub. He frequently 
regretted that so knowing a writer had never seen or heard of 
Wethercote and Yordas caves, the ebbing and flowing spring at 
Giggleswick, Malham Cove, and Gordale Scar, that he might have 
described them among the wonders of the world. Omne ignotum 
pro viagnifico 4 is a maxim which will not in all cases hold good. 
There are things which we do not undervalue because we are 
familiar with them, but which are admired the more the more 
thoroughly they are known and understood ; it is thus with the 
grand objects of nature and the finest works of art, with whatso- 
ever is truly great and excellent. Daniel was not deficient in 
imagination ; but no description of places which he had never 
seen, however exaggerated (as such things always are), impressed 
him so strongly as these objects in his own neighbourhood, which 
he had known from childhood. Three or four times in his life it 
had happened that strangers, with a curiosity as uncommon in that 
age as it is general in this, came from afar to visit these wonders 
of the West Riding, and Daniel accompanied them with a delight 
such as he never experienced on any other occasion. 

But the Author in whom he delighted most was Plutarch, of 
whose works he was lucky enough to possess the worthier half: 
if the other had perished, Plutarch would not have been a popular 
writer, but he would have held a higher place in the estimation of 

3 i.e. Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas's " Divine Weeks and Works " (1598V 

4 Everything unknown as wonderful. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 561 

the judicious. Daniel could have posed a candidate for univer- 
sity honours, and perhaps the examiner too, with some of the odd 
learning which he had stored up in his memory from those great 
repositories of ancient knowledge. Refusing all reward for such 
services, the strangers to whom he officiated as a guide, though 
they perceived that he was an extraordinary person, were little 
aware how much information he had acquired and of how strange 
a kind. His talk with them did not go beyond the subjects which 
the scenes they came to visit naturally suggested, and they won- 
dered more at the questions he asked, than at any thing which he 
advanced himself. For his disposition was naturally shy, and 
that which had been bashfulness in youth assumed the appear- 
ance of reserve as he advanced in life ; for having none to com- 
municate with upon his favourite studies, he lived in an intellectual 
world ' of his own, a mental solitude as complete as that of Alex- 
ander Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe. Even to the Curate his con- 
versation, if he had touched upon his books, would have been 
heathen Greek ; and to speak the truth plainly, without knowing 
a letter of that language, he knew more about the Greeks than 
nine-tenths of the clergy at that time, including all the dissenters, 
and than nine-tenths of the schoolmasters also. 

Our good Daniel had none of that confidence which so usually 
and so unpleasantly characterizes self-taught men. In fact he was 
by no means aware of the extent of his acquirements, all that he 
knew in this kind having been acquired for amusement not for 
use. He had never attempted to teach himself anything. These 
books had lain in his way in boyhood, or fallen in it afterwards, 
and the perusal of them, intently as it was followed, was always 
accounted by him to be nothing more than recreation. None of 
his daily business had ever been neglected for it ; he cultivated 
his fields and his garden, repaired his walls, looked to the stable, 
tended his cows and salved his sheep, as diligently and as con- 
tentedly as if he had possessed neither capacity nor inclination for 
any higher employments. Yet Daniel was one of those men, who, 
if disposition and aptitude were not over-ruled by circumstances, 



.562 kOBERT SOUTH EY. 

would have grown pale with study, instead of being bronzed and 
hardened by sun and wind and rain. There were in him unde- 
veloped talents which might have raised him to distinction as an 
antiquary, a virtuoso of the Royal Society, a poet, or a theologian, 
to whichever course the bias in his ball of fortune had inclined. 
But he had not a particle of envy in his composition. He thought 
indeed that if he had had grammar learning in his youth like the 
Curate, he would have made more use of it ; but there was noth- 
ing either of the sourness or bitterness (call it which you please) 
of repining in this natural reflection. 

Never indeed was any man more contented with doing his duty 
in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. And 
well he might do so, for no man ever passed through the world 
with less to disquiet or to sour him. Bred up in habits which se- 
cured the continuance of that humble but sure independence to 
which he was born, he had never known what it was to be anxious 
for the future. At the age of twenty-five he had brought home a 
wife, the daughter of a little landholder like himself, with fifteen 
pounds for her portion, and the true love of his youth proved to him 
a faithful helpmate in those years when the dream of life is over 
and we live in realities. If at any time there had been some alloy 
in his happiness, it was when there appeared reason to suppose 
that in him his family would be extinct ; for though no man knows 
what parental feelings are till he has experienced them, and Daniel 
therefore knew not the whole value of that which he had never en- 
joyed, the desire of progeny is natural to the heart of man ; and 
though Daniel had neither large estates, nor an illustrious name to 
transmit, it was an unwelcome thought that the little portion of the 
earth which had belonged to his fathers time out of mind, should 
pass into the possession of some stranger, who would tread on their 
graves and his own without any regard to the dust that lay beneath. 
That uneasy apprehension was removed after he had been married 
fifteen years, when to the great joy of both parents, because they 
had long ceased to entertain any hope of such an event, their 
wishes were fulfilled in the birth of a son. This their only child 






SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 563 

was healthy, apt and docile, to all appearance as happily disposed 
in mind and body as a father's heart could wish. If they had fine 
weather for winning their hay or shearing their corn, they thanked 
God for it ; if the season proved unfavourable, the labour was only 
a little the more and the crop a little the worse. Their stations 
secured them from want, and they had no wish beyond it. What 
more had Daniel to desire? 5 



Chapter IX. P. I. — Exceptions to one of King Solomon's 
Rules. — A Winter's Evening at Daniel's Fireside. 

" Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, 
his feet will not depart from it." Generally speaking it will be 
found so ; but is there any other rule to which there are so many 
exceptions ? 

Ask the serious Christian, as he calls himself, or the Professor 
(another and more fitting appellative which the Christian Pharisees 
have chosen for themselves) — ask him whether he has found it 
hold good ? Whether his sons when they attained to years of dis- 
cretion (which are the most indiscreet years in the course of human 
life) have profited as he expected by the long extemporaneous 
prayers to which they listened night and morning, the sad sabbaths 
which they were compelled to observe, and the soporific sermons 
which closed the domestic religiosities of those melancholy days ? 
Ask him if this discipline has prevented them from running head- 
long into the follies and vices of the age ? from being birdlimed 
by dissipation? or caught in the spider's web of sophistry and 
unbelief ? " It is no doubt a true observation," says Bishop Pat- 
rick, " that the ready way to make the minds of youth grow awry, 
is to lace them too hard, by denying them their just freedom." 

Ask the old faithful servant of Mammon, whom Mammon has 
rewarded to his heart's desire, and in whom the acquisition of 
riches has only increased his eagerness for acquiring more — ask 

5 Here follows a poetical passage from Du Bartas, a favourite one of Daniel's. 



564 ROBERT SOU THEY. 

him whether he has succeeded in training up his heir to the same 
service ? He will tell you that the young man is to be found upon 
race-grounds, and in gaming-houses ; that he is taking his swing of 
extravagance and excess, and is on the high road to ruin. 

Ask the wealthy Quaker, the pillar of the meeting — most ortho- 
dox in heterodoxy — who never wore a garment of forbidden cut 
or color, never bent his body in salutation, or his knees in prayer, 
— never uttered the heathen name of a day or month, nor ever 
addressed himself to any person without religiously speaking ille- 
gitimate English — ask him how it has happened that the tailor 
has converted his sons? He will fold his hands and twirl his 
thumbs mournfully in silence. It has not been for want of train- 
ing them in the way wherein it was his wish that they should go. 

You are about, Sir, to send your son to a public school : Eton 
or Westminster; Winchester or Harrow; Rugby or the Charter 
House, no matter which. He may come from either an accom- 
plished scholar to the utmost extent that school education can 
make him so ; he may be the better both for its discipline and its 
want of discipline ; it may serve him excellently well as a prepara- 
tory school for the world into which he is about to enter. But also 
he may come away an empty coxcomb or a hardened brute — a 
spendthrift — a profligate — a blackguard or a sot. 

To put a boy in the way he should go, is like sending out a ship 
well found, well manned, and stored, and with a careful captain ; 
but there are rocks and shallows in her course, winds and currents 
to be encountered, and all the contingencies and perils of the sea. 

How often has it been seen that sons, not otherwise deficient in 
duty toward their parents, have, in the most momentous concerns 
of life, taken the course most opposite to that in which they were 
trained to go, going wrong where the father would have directed 
them aright, or taking the right path in spite of all inducements 
and endeavours for leading them wrong ! The son of Charles 
Wesley, born and bred in Methodism and bound to it by the 
strongest ties of pride and prejudice, became a papist. This in- 
deed was but passing from one erroneous persuasion to another, 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 565 

and a more inviting one. But Isaac Casaubon also had the grief 
of seeing a son seduced into the Romish superstition, and on the 
part of that great and excellent man, there had been no want of 
discretion in training him, nor of sound learning and sound wisdom. 
Archbishop Leighton, an honour to his church, his country, and 
his kind, was the child of one of those firebrands who kindled the 
Great Rebellion. And Franklin had a son, who, notwithstanding 
the example of his father (and such a father !), continued stedfast 
in his duty as a soldier and a subject ; he took the unsuccessful 
side — but — nunquam successu crescat hones turn [ ?] G No such 
disappointment was destined to befal our Daniel. The way in 
which he trained up his son was that into which the bent of the 
boy's own nature would have led him ; and all circumstances com- 
bined to favour the tendency of his education. The country 
abounding in natural objects of sublimity and beauty (some of 
these singular in their kind) might have impressed a duller imagi- 
nation than had fallen to his lot ; and that imagination had time 
enough for its workings during the solitary walks to and from 
school morning and evening. His home was in a lonely spot and 
having neither brother nor sister, nor neighbours near enough in 
any degree to supply their place as playmates, he became his 
father's companion imperceptibly as he ceased to be his fondling. 
And the effect was hardly less apparent in Daniel than in the boy. 
He was no longer the taciturn person as of yore ; it seemed as 
if his tongue had been loosened, and when the reservoirs of his 
knowledge were opened, they flowed freely. 

Their chimney corner on a winter's evening presented a group 
not unworthy of Sir Joshua's pencil. There sate Daniel, richer in 
marvellous stories than ever traveller who in the days of mendacity 
returned from the East ; the peat fire shining upon a countenance 
which, weather-hardened as it was, might have given the painter a 
model for a Patriarch, so rare was the union which it exhibited of 

6 Whether the honourable never prospers in the issue ? — Lucan, Pharsalia, 
IX. 571. It is a question in Lucan dependent on 566: Quid quae ri, Labiene> 
jubes ? What do you bid to be sought ? 



566 ROBERT SOU THEY. 

intelligence, benevolence, and simplicity. There sate the boy with 
open eyes and ears, raised head, and fallen lip, in all the happiness 
of wonder and implicit belief. There sate Dinah, not less proud 
of her husband's learning than of the towardly disposition and 
promising talents of her son, — twirling the thread at her spinning- 
wheel, but attending to all that past ; and when there was a pause 
in the discourse, fetching a deep sigh, and exclaiming, " Lord bless 
us ! what wonderful things there are in the world ! " There also 
sate Haggy, 7 knitting stockings, and sharing in the comforts and 
enjoyments of the family when the day's work was done. And 
there sate William Dove ; — but William must have a chapter to 
himself. 

Chapter XXVI. P. I. — Daniel at Doncaster ; the Reason 
Why He was destined for the Medical Profession, rather 
than Holy Orders ; and some Remarks upon Sermons. 

Fourteen years have elapsed since the scene took place which 
is related in the twenty-second chapter : 8 and Daniel the younger, 
at the time to which this present chapter refers, was residing at 
Doncaster with Peter Hopkins, who practised the medical art in all 
its branches. He had lived with him eight years, first as a pupil, 
latterly in the capacity of an assistant, and afterwards as an 
adopted successor. 

How this connection between Daniel and Peter Hopkins was 
brought about, and the circumstances which prepared the way for 
it, would have appeared in some of the non-existent fourteen vol- 
umes, if it had pleased Fate that they should have been written. 

Some of my readers, and especially those who pride themselves 
upon their knowledge of the world, or their success in it, will think 
it strange, perhaps, that the elder Daniel, when he resolved to 
make a scholar of his son, did not determine upon breeding him 

7 " Agatha the maid, or Haggy, as she was called." 

8 A series of quotations from Proverbs about Wisdom, repeated by Daniel 
the elder by way of instruction to Daniel the younger. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 567 

either to the Church or the Law, in either of which professions the 
way was easier and more inviting. Now though this will not ap- 
pear strange to those other readers who have perceived that the 
father had no knowledge of the world, and could have none it is 
nevertheless proper to enter into some explanation upo;i that point 
If George Herbert's Temple, or his Remains, or his Life by old 
Izaak Walton, had all or any of them happened to be among those 
few but precious books which Daniel prized so highly and used so 
well, it is likely that the wish of his heart would have been to train 
up his Son for a Priest to the Temple. But so it was that none of 
his reading was of a kind to give his thoughts that direction; and 
he had not conceived any exalted opinion of the Clergy from the 
specimens which had fallen in his way. A contempt which was 
but too general had been brought upon the Order by the ignorance 
or the poverty of a great proportion of its members. The person 
who served the humble church which Daniel dutifully attended 
was almost as poor as a Capuchine, and quite as ignorant This 
poor man had obtained in evil hour from some easy or careless 
Bishop a licence to preach. It was reprehensible enough to have 
ordained one who was destitute of every qualification that the office 
requires; the fault was still greater in promoting him from the desk 
to the pulpit. 

"A very great Scholar" is quoted by Dr. Eachard as saying 
that such preaching as is usual is a hindrance of salvation rather 
than the means to it." This was said when the fashion of con- 
ceited preaching, which is satirised in Frey Gerundio had ex- 
tended to England, and though that fashion has so long been 
obsolete, that many persons will be surprised to hear it had ever 
existed among us, it may still reasonably be questioned whether 
sermons, such as they commonly are, do not quench more devo- 
tion than they kindle. 

My Lord ! put not the book aside in displeasure S (I address 
myself to whatever Bishop may be reading it.) Unbiassed I will 
not call myself, for I am a true and orthodox churchman and have 
the interests of the Church zealously at heart, because I believe and 



568 ROBERT SOU THEY. 

know them to be essentially and inseparably connected with those 
of the commonwealth. But I have been an attentive observer, and 
as such, request a hearing. Receive my remarks as coming from 
one whose principles are in entire accord with your Lordship's, 
whose wishes have the same scope and purport, and who, while he 
offers his honest opinion, submits it with proper humility to your 
judgment. 

The founders of the English Church did not intend that the 
sermon should invariably form a part of the Sunday services. It 
became so in condescension to the Puritans, of whom it has long 
been the fashion to speak with respect instead of holding them up 
to the contempt and infamy and abhorrence which they have so 
richly merited. They have been extolled by their descendants 
and successors as models of patriotism and piety ; and the success 
with which this delusion has been practised is one of the most 
remarkable examples of what may be effected by dint of effrontery 
and persevering falsehood. 

That sentence I am certain will not be disapproved at Fulham 
or Lambeth. Dr. Southey, or Dr. Phillpots, might have written it. 

The general standard of the Clergy has undoubtedly been very 
much raised since the days when they were not allowed to preach 
without a licence for that purpose from the Ordinary. Neverthe- 
less it is certain that many persons who are in other and more 
material respects well, or even excellently, qualified for the ministe- 
rial functions, may be wanting in the qualifications for a preacher. 
A man may possess great learning, sound principles and good 
sense, and yet be without the talent of arranging and expressing 
his thoughts well in a written discourse : he may want the power 
of fixing the attention, or reaching the hearts of his hearers ; and 
in that case the discourse, as some old writer has said in serious 
jest, which was designed for edification turns to edification. The 
evil was less in Addison's days when he who distrusted his own 
abilities availed himself of the compositions of some approved 
Divine, and was not disparaged in the opinion of his congregation 
by taking a printed volume in the pulpit. This is no longer prac- 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 569 

tised ; but instead of this, which secured wholesome instruction to 
the people, sermons are manufactured for sale, and sold in manu- 
script, or printed in a cursive type imitating manuscript. The 
articles which are prepared for such a market are, for the most part, 
copied from obscure books, with more or less alteration of language, 
and generally for the worse, and so far as they are drawn from such 
sources they are not likely to contain any thing exceptionable on 
the score of doctrine : but the best authors will not be resorted to, 
for fear of discovery, and therefore when these are used, the con- 
gregation lose as much in point of instruction, as he who uses them 
ought to lose in self-esteem. 

But it is more injurious when a more scrupulous man composes 
his own discourses, if he be deficient either in judgment or learn- 
ing. He is then more likely to entangle plain texts than to unravel 
knotty ones ; rash positions are sometimes advanced by such 
preachers, unsound arguments are adduced by them in support 
of momentous doctrines, and though these things neither offend 
the ignorant and careless, nor injure the well-minded and well-in- 
formed, they carry poison with them when they enter a diseased 
ear. It cannot be doubted that such sermons act as corrobora- 
tives for infidelity. 

Nor when they contain nothing that is actually erroneous, but 
are merely unimproving, are they in that case altogether harmless. 
They are not harmless if they are felt to be tedious. They are 
not harmless if they torpify the understanding : a chill that begins 
there may extend to the vital regions. Bishop Taylor (the great 
Jeremy) says of devotional books, that " they are in a large degree 
the occasion of so great indevotion as prevails among the gener- 
ality of nominal Christians, being," he says, " represented naked 
in the conclusions of spiritual life, without or art or learning ; and 
made apt for persons who can do nothing but believe and love, 
not for them that can consider and love." This applies more 
forcibly to bad sermons than to common-place books of devotion ; 
the book may be laid aside if it offend the reader's judgment, but 
the sermon is a positive infliction upon the helpless hearers. 



570 ROBERT SOU THEY. 

The same Bishop, — and his name ought to carry with it author- 
ity among the wise and the good — has delivered an opinion upon 
this subject, in his admirable Apology for Authorized and Set 
Forms of Liturgy. " Indeed," he says, " if I may freely declare 
my opinion, I think it were not amiss, if the liberty of making 
sermons were something more restrained than it is ; and that such 
persons only were entrusted with the liberty, for whom the church 
herself may safely be responsive, — that is, men learned and pious ; 
and that the other part, the vidgus ckri, should instruct the peo- 
ple out of the fountains of the church and the public stock, till by 
so long exercise and discipline in the schools of the Prophets they 
may also be intrusted to minister of their own unto the people. 
This I am sure was the practice of the Primitive Church." 

" I am convinced," said Dr. Johnson, " that I ought to be at 
Divine Service more frequently than I am ; but the provocations 
given by ignorant and affected preachers too often disturb the 
mental calm which otherwise would succeed to prayer. I am apt 
to whisper to myself on such occasions, ' How can this illiterate 
fellow dream of fixing attention, after we have been listening to 
the sublimest truths, conveyed in the most chaste and exalted lan- 
guage, through a liturgy which must be regarded as the genuine 
offspring of piety impregnated by wisdom!'" — "Take notice, 
however," he adds, "though I make this confession respecting 
myself, I do not mean to recommend the fastidiousness that some- 
times leads me to exchange congregational for solitary worship." 

The saintly Herbert says, 

" Judge not the Preacher, for he is thy Judge; 
If thou mislike him, thou conceiv'st him not. 
God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge 
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. 
The worst speak something good. If all want sense, 
God takes a text and preacheth patience. 

He that gets patience and the blessing which 
Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains." 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 571 

This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived 
from the discourses of the poor curate ; and it was a lesson of 
which his meek and benign temper stood in no need. Nature had 
endowed him with this virtue, and this Sunday's discipline exer- 
cised without strengthening it. While he was, in the phrase of the 
Religious Public, sitting under the preacher, he obeyed to a cer- 
tain extent George Herbert's precept, — that is, he obeyed it as 
he did other laws with the existence of which he was unac- 
quainted, — 

" Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part; 
Bring not thy plough, thy plots, thy pleasure thither." 

Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. Plots he had 
none. For the Plough, — it was what he never followed in fancy, 
patiently as he plodded after the furrow in his own vocation. And 
then for worldly thoughts, they were not likely in that place to 
enter a mind which never at any time entertained them. But to 
that sort of thought (if thought it may be called) which cometh as 
it listeth, and which, when the mind is at ease and the body in 
health, is the forerunner and usher of sleep, he certainly gave way. 
The curate's voice passed over his ear like the sound of the brook 
with which it blended, and it conveyed to him as little meaning 
and less feeling. During the sermon, therefore, he retired into 
himself, with as much or as little edification as a Quaker finds at a 
silent meeting. 

It happened also that of the few clergy within the very narrow 
circle in which Daniel moved, some were in no good repute for 
their conduct, and none displayed either that zeal in the discharge 
of their pastoral functions, or that earnestness and ability in per- 
forming the service of the Church, which are necessary for com- 
manding the respect and securing the affections of the parishion- 
ers. The clerical profession had never presented itself to him in 
its best, which is really its true light ; and for that cause he would 
never have thought of it for the boy, even if the means of putting 
him forward in this path had been easier and more obvious than 



572 ROBERT SOUTHKY. 

they were. And for the dissenting ministry, Daniel liked not the 
name of a Nonconformist. The Puritans had left behind them an 
ill savour in his part of the country, as they had done every where 
else ; and the extravagances of the primitive Quakers, which during 
his childhood were fresh in remembrance, had not yet been for- 
gotten. 

It was well remembered in those parts that the Vicar of Kirkby 
Lonsdale, through the malignity of some of his puritanical parish- 
ioners, had been taken out of his bed . . . , and hurried away to 
Lancaster jail, where he was imprisoned three years for no other 
offence than that of fidelity to his Church and his King. And that 
the man who was the chief instigator of this persecution, and had 
enriched himself by the spoil of his neighbour's goods, though he 
flourished for awhile, bought a field and built a fine house, came 
to poverty at last, and died in prison, having for some time received 
his daily food there from the table of one of this very Vicar's sons. 
It was well remembered also that, in a parish of the adjoining 
county-palatine, the puritanical party had set fire in the night 
to the Rector's barns, stable, and parsonage ; and that he and his 
wife and children had only as it were by miracle escaped from the 
flames. 

William Dove had also among his traditional stores some stories 
of a stranger kind concerning the Quakers, these parts of the 
North having been a great scene of their vagaries in their early 
days. He used to relate how one of them went into the church at 
Brough, during the reign of the Puritans, with a white sheet about 
his body, and a rope about his neck, to prophesy before the peo- 
ple and their Whig Priest (as he called him) that the surplice 
which was then prohibited should again come into use, and that 
the Gallows should have its due ! And how when their ringleader, 
George Fox, was put in prison at Carlisle, the wife of Justice Ben- 
son would eat no meat unless she partook it with him at the bars 
of his dungeon, declaring she was moved to do this ; wherefore it 
was supposed he had bewitched her. And not without reason ; 
for when this old George went, as he often did, into the Church to 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 573 

disturb the people, and they thrust him out, and fell upon him 
and beat him, sparing neither sticks nor stones if they came to 
hand, he was presently, for all that they had done to him, as sound 
and as fresh as if nothing had touched him ; and when they tried 
to kill him, they could not take away his life ! And how this old 
George rode a great black horse, upon which he was seen in the 
course of the same hour at two places, three score miles distant 
from each other ! And how some of the women who followed this 
old George used to strip off all their clothes, and in that plight go 
into the church at service time on the Sunday, to bear testimony 
against the pomps and vanities of the world ; " and to be sure " 
said William, " they must have been witched, or they never would 
have done this." " Lord deliver us ! " said Dinah, " to be sure 
they must ! " — " To be sure they must, Lord bless us all ! " said 
Haggy. 

Interchapter V. — Wherein the Author makes known his 
Good Intentions to all Readers, and offers Good Advice 
to some of Them. 

Reader, my compliments to you ! 

This is a form of courtesy which the Turks use in their com- 
positions, and being so courteous a form, I have here adopted it. 
Why not ? 

Turks though they are, we learnt inoculation from them, and 
the use of coffee ; and hitherto we have taught them nothing but 
the use of tobacco in return. 

Reader, my compliments to you ! 

Why is it that we hear no more of Gentle Readers ? Is it that 
having become critical in this age of Magazines and Reviews, they 
have ceased to be gentle ? But all are not critical ; 

"The baleful dregs 
Of these late ages, — that Circean draught 
Of servitude and folly, have not yet, — 
Yet have not so dishonour'd, so deform'd 
The native judgment of the human soul." — Akenside. 



574 ROBERT SOU THEY. 

In thus applying these lines I mean the servitude to which any 
rational man degrades his intellect, when he submits to receive an 
opinion from the dictation of another, upon a point whereon he is 
just as capable of judging for himself; — the intellectual servitude 
of being told by Mr. A., B., or C. whether he is to like a book or 
not, — or why he is to like it : and the folly of supposing that the 
man who writes anonymously, is on that very account entitled to 
more credit for judgment, erudition, and integrity, than the author 
who comes forward in his own person, and stakes his character 
upon what he advances. 

All Readers, however, — thank Heaven, and what is left among 
us of that best and rarest of all senses called Common Sense, — all 
Readers, however, are not critical. There are still some who are 
willing to be pleased, and thankful for being pleased ; and who do 
not think it necessary that they should be able to parse their pleas- 
ure, like a lesson, and give a rule or a reason why they are pleased, 
or why they ought not to be pleased. There are still readers who 
have never read an Essay upon Taste ; — and if they take my ad- 
vice, they never will ; for they can no more improve their taste by 
so doing, than they could improve their appetite or their digestion 
by studying a cookery-book. I have something to say to all 
classes of Readers ; and, therefore, having thus begun to speak of 
one, with that class I will proceed. It is to the youthful part of 
my lectors — (why not lectors as well as auditors?) it is virgini- 
bus puerisque that I now address myself. Young Readers, you 
whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, 
and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted by the 
world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism 
will teach you ! 

Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or 
evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it in- 
duced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to 
think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be 
harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? 
Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the 



SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCTOR. 575 

control of others ; and disposed you to relax in that self-govern- 
ment, without which both the law of God and man tell us there 
can be no virtue — and consequently no happiness ? Has it at- 
tempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great 
and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and 
your fellow-citizens ? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your 
vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities? 
Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked 
the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of 
right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human 
soul ? If so — if you are conscious of all or any of these effects, 
— or if, having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the 
effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire, 
whatever name it may bear in the title-page ! Throw it in the fire, 
young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend ! — 
young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the 
prominent feature of a rosewood bookcase ! 



XXIX. 

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

(1775-1864.) 

DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 

[Written about 1824. J 

Samuel Johnson and John Horne (Tooke). 1 

Tooke. Doctor Johnson, I rejoice in the opportunity, late as it 
presents itself, of congratulating you on the completion of your 
great undertaking; my bookseller sent me your Dictionary the 
day it came from the press, and it has exercised ever since a good 
part of my time and attention. 

Johnson, Who are you, sir? 

Tooke. My name is Horne. 

Johnson. What is my Dictionary, sir, to you? 

Tooke. A treasure. 

Johnson. Keep it then at home and to yourself, sir; as you 
would any other treasure, and talk no more about it than you 
would about that. You have picked up some knowledge, sir ; but 
out of dirty places. What man in his senses would fix his study 
on the hustings? When a gentleman takes it into his head to 
conciliate the rabble, I deny his discretion and I doubt his hon- 
esty. Sir, what can you have to say to me ? 

Tooke. Doctor, my studies have led me some little way into 
etymology, and I am interested in whatever contributes to the 
right knowledge of our language. 

1 "J. Horne assumed the name of Tooke after the supposed date of this 
Conversation." 

576 



DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 577 

Johnson. Sir, have you read our old authors? 

Tooke. Almost all of them that are printed and extant. 

Johnson. Prodigious ! do you speak truth? 

Tooke. To the best of my belief. 

Johnson. Sir, how could you, a firebrand tossed about by the 
populace, find leisure for so much reading? 

Tooke. The number of English books printed before the acces- 
sion of James the First is smaller than you appear to imagine ; 
and the manuscripts, I believe, are not numerous; certainly in 
the libraries of our Universities they are scanty. I wish you had 
traced in your preface all the changes made in the orthography 
these last three centuries, for which five additional pages would 
have been sufficient. The first attempt to purify and reform the 
tongue was made by John Lyly, in a book entitled Euphues and 
his England? and a most fantastical piece of fustian it is. This 
author has often been confounded with William Lily, a better 
grammarian, and better known. Benjamin Jonson did somewhat, 
and could have done more. Although our governors have taken 
no pains either to improve our language or to extend it, none in 
Europe is spoken habitually by so many. The French boast the 
universality of theirs : yet the Germans, the Spaniards, and the 
Italians may contend with them on this ground : for as the Dutch 
is a dialect of the German, so is the Portuguese of the Spanish, and 
not varying in more original words than the Milanese and Nea- 
politan from the Tuscan. The lingua franca, which pervades the 
coasts of the Mediterranean, the Ionian, and the JEgesai seas, is 
essentially Italian. The languages of the two most extensive em- 
pires in Europe are confined to the fewest people. There are not 
thirteen millions who speak Turkish, nor fifteen who speak Rus- 
sian, though branches of the Slavonic are scattered far. If any 
respect had been had to the literary glory of our country, whereon 
much of its political is and ever will be dependent, many millions 
more would at this time be speaking in English ; and the Irish, 

2 See the first Selection in this volume. 



578 WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 

the Welsh, and the Canadians, like the Danes and Saxons, would 
have forgotten they were conquered people. 

We should be anxious both to improve our language and to 
extend it. England ought to have no colony in which it will not 
be soon the only one spoken. Nations may be united by identity 
of speech more easily than by identity of laws : for identity of 
laws only shows the conquered that they are bound to another 
people, while identity of speech shows them that they are bound 
with it. There is no firm conjunction but this ; none that does 
not retain on it the scar and seam, and often with much soreness. 

Johnson. So far, I believe, I may agree with you, and remain a 
good subject. 

Tooke. Let us now descend from generalities to particulars. 
Our spelling has undergone as many changes as the French, and 
more. 

Johnson. And because it hath undergone many, you would 
make it undergo more ! There is a fastidiousness in the use of 
language that indicates an atrophy of mind. We must take words 
as the world presents them to us, without looking at the root. If 
we grubbed under this and laid it bare, we should leave no room 
for our thoughts to lie evenly, and every expression would be con- 
strained and crampt. We should scarcely find a metaphor in the 
purest author that is not false or imperfect, nor could we imagine 
one ourselves that would not be stiff and frigid. Take now for 
instance a phrase in common use. You are rather late. Can 
anything seem plainer? Yet rather, as you know, meant origi- 
nally earlier, being the comparative of rathe ; the " rathe prim- 
rose" of the poet 3 recalls it. We cannot say, You are sooner late : 
but who is so troublesome and silly as to question the propriety of 
saying, You are rather late? We likewise say, bad orthography 
and false orthography : how can there be false or bad right- 
spelling? 

Tooke. I suspect there are more of these inadvertencies in our 
language than in any other. 

3 From Milton's Lyddas, 142. 



DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 579 

Johnson. Sir, our language is a very good language. 
Tooke. Were it not, I should be less solicitous to make it better. 
Johnson. You make it better, sir ! 

Tooke. By reverencing the authority of the learned, by expos- 
ing the corruptions of the ignorant, and by reclaiming what never 
ought to have been obsolete. 
Johnson. Sir, the task is hopeless : little can be done now. 
Tooke. And because little can be done, must we do nothing? 
Because with all our efforts we are imperfect, may not we try to 
be virtuous? Many of the anomalies in our language can be 
avoided or corrected : if many shall yet remain, something at 
least will have been done for elegance and uniformity. 
Johnson. I hate your innovations. 

Tooke. I not only hate them, but would resist and reject them, 
if I could. It is only such writers as you that can influence the 
public by your authority and example. 

Johnson. Sir, if the best writer in England dared to spell three 
words differently from his contemporaries, and as Milton spent 
[spelt] them, he would look about in vain for a publisher. 

Tooke. Yet Milton is most careful and exact in his spelling, and 
his ear is as correct as his learning. His language would continue 
to be the language of his country, had it not been for the Restora- 
tion. 

Johnson. I have patience, sir ! I have patience, sir ! Pray go 
on. 

Tooke. I will take advantage of so much affability ; and I hope 
that patience, like other virtues, may improve by exercise. 

On the return of Charles from the Continent, some of his fol- 
lowers may really have lost their native idiom, or at least may 
have forgotten the graver and solid er parts of it ; for many were 
taken over in their childhood. On their return to England, noth- 
ing gave such an air of fashion as imperfection in English : it 
proved high breeding, it displayed the court and loyalty. Home- 
bred English ladies soon acquired it from their noble and brave 
gallants ; and it became the language of the Parliament, of the 



580 WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 

Church, and of the Stage. Between the last two places was pretty 
equally distributed all the facetiousness left among us. 

Johnson. Keep clear of the church, sir, and stick to language. 

Tooke. Punctually will I obey each of your commands. 

Johnson. Did South and Cowley and Waller fall into this slough ? 

Tooke. They could not keep others from it. I peruse their 
works with pleasure : but South, the greatest of them, is negligent 
and courtly in his spelling, and sometimes, although not often, 
more gravely incorrect. 

Johnson. And pray now what language do you like? 
Tooke. The best in all countries is that which is spoken by in- 
telligent women of too high rank for petty affectation, and too 
much request in society for deep study. Cicero praises more than 
one such among the Romans ; the number was greater among the 
Greeks. We have no writer in our language so pure as Madame 
de Sevigne. Indeed we must acknowledge that the French far 
excell us in purity of style. When have we seen, or when can we 
expect, such a writer as Le Sage ? In our days there is scarcely 
an instance of a learned or unlearned man who has written grace- 
fully, excepting your friend Goldsmith and (if your modesty will 
admit my approaches) yourself. In your Lives of the Poets, you 
have laid aside the sceptre of Jupiter for the wand of Mercury, and 
have really called up with it some miserable ghosts from the dead. 

Johnson. Sir, I desire no compliments. 

Tooke. Before, I offered not my compliment but my tribute ; 
I dreaded a repulse ; but I little expected to see, as I do, the 
finger of Aurora on your face. 

Johnson. If the warmth of the room is enough to kindle your 
poetry, well may it possess a slight influence on my cheek. The 
learned men, I presume, are superseded by your public orators. 

Tooke. Our parliamentary speakers of most eminence are super- 
ficial in scholarship, as we understand the word, and by no means 
dangerously laden with any species of knowledge. Burke is the 
most eloquent and philosophical of them ; Fox the readiest at 
reply, the stoutest debater, the acutest disputant. 



DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 581 

Johnson. Rebels ! but what you say of their knowledge is the 
truth. I have said it of one party, and I know it of the other, else 
I would trounce you for your asseveration. 

Tooke. You yourself induced me to make the greater part of 
my remarks ; more important, as being on things more important, 
than transitory men ; such is language. 

Johnson. How, sir, did I? 

Tooke. By having recommended in some few instances a cor- 
recter mode of spelling. Bentley and Hall and Dryden, though 
sound writers, are deficient in authority with me ; when, for ex- 
ample, they write incompatible for incompetible : we want both 
words, but we must be careful not to confound and misapply 
them. Dryden and Roscommon formed a design of purifying 
and fixing the language : neither of them knew its origin or princi- 
ples, or was intimately or indeed moderately versed in our earlier 
authors, of whom Chaucer was probably the only one they had 
perused. It is pretended that they abandoned the design from 
the unquietness of the times : as if the times disturbed them in 
their studies, leaving them peace enough for poetry, but not 
enough for philology. 

Johnson. And are you, sir, more acute, more learned, or more 
profound ? What ! because at one time our English books were 
scanty, you would oppose the scanty to the many, with all the 
rashness and inconsistency of a republican. 

Tooke. Bearing all your reproofs and reproaches with equa- 
nimity and submission, I converse with you on this subject be- 
cause you have given up much time to it : with another I should 
decline the discussion. I am hopeful of gaining some information 
and of suggesting some subject for inquiry. Illiterate, inconsider- 
ate, irreverent, and overweening men will be always disregarded 
by me. Like children and clowns, if they see a throne or a judg- 
ment-seat, they must forsooth sit down in it. Such people set 
themselves above me, and enjoy the same feelings as those in the 
one-shilling gallery who look down on Garrick. He is only on 
the stage, no higher than the footlights, and plays only for others ; 



582 WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 

whereas they have placed themselves at the summit, and applaud 
and condemn to please their fancies. It is equitable that coarse 
impudence should be met with calm contempt, and that Wisdom 
should sit down and lower her eyes, when Impudence trips over 
the way to discountenance her, or Ignorance starts up to teach 
her. 

Johnson. Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and 
always will be innovators \ some in dress, some in polity, some in 
language. 

Tooke. I wonder whether they invented the choice appellations 
you have just repeated. 

Johnson. No, sir ! Indignant wise men invented them. 

Tooke. Long ago then. Indignant wise men lived in the time 
of the Centaurs \ such combinations have never existed since. 
Your remark, however, on the introducers of new words into our 
language, is, I apprehend, well-founded : but you spoke generally 
and absolutely, and in this (I think) incorrectly. Julius Caesar, 
whom you ought to love and reverence for giving the last blow to 
a republic, was likewise an innovator in spelling ; so was Virgil ; 
and to such a degree, that, Aulus Gellius tells us, he spelled the 
same word differently in different places, to gratify his ear. Mil- 
ton has done the same. 

Johnson. And sometimes injudiciously : for instance in writing 
Hee emphatically, He less so. He also writes subtile, as a scholar 
should do ; and suttle, as the word is pronounced by the most 
vulgar. 

Tooke. Cicero, not contented with new spellings, created new 
words. Now the three Romans have immemorially been con- 
sidered the most elegant and careful writers in their language : 
and we confer on our countryman but a small portion of the 
praises due to him, in asserting that both in poetry and prose his 
mastery is above them all. 

Milton is no factitious or accrete 4 man ; no pleader, no rhetori- 
cian. Truth in him is the parent of Energy, and Energy the sup- 

4 made up. 



DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 583 

porter of Truth. If we rise to the Greek language, the most 
eloquent man on record, Pericles, introduced the double T instead 
of the double S : and it was enamelled on that golden language to 
adorn the eloquence of Aspasia, and to shine among the graces 
of Alcibiades. Socrates bent his thoughtful head over it, and 
it was observed in the majestic march of Plato. At the same 
time Thucydides and the tragedians, together with Aristophanes, 
contributed to form, or united to countenance, the Middle 
Attic. One would expect that Elegance and Atticism herself 
might have rested and been contented. No : Xenophon, Plato, 
^Eschines, Demosthenes, were promoters of the New Attic, 
altering and softening many words in the spelling. With such 
men before me, I think it to be deeply regretted that coxcombs 
and blockheads should be our only teachers, where we have much 
to learn, much to obliterate, and much to mend. 

Johnson. Follow your betters, sir ! 

Tooke. Such is my intention : and it is also my intention that 
others shall follow theirs. 

Johnson. Obey the majority, according to your own principles. 
You reformers will let nothing be great, nothing be stabile. The 
orators you mention were deluders of the populace. 

Tooke. And so were the poets, no doubt : but let us hope that 
the philosophers and moralists were not, nor indeed the writers of 
comedy. Menander was among the reformers : so was Plautus at 
Rome : the most highly estimated for his rich Latinity by Cicero 
and all the learned. Our own language had, under the translators 
of the Bible and of the Liturgy, reached the same pitch as the 
Latin had in the time of Plautus ; and the sanctitude of Milton's 
genius gave it support, until the worst of French invasions over- 
threw it. Cowley, Sprat, Dryden, imported a trimmer and suc- 
cincter dress, stripping the ampler of its pearls and bullion. 
Arbuthnot and Steele and Swift and Addison added no weight or 
precision to the language, nor were they choice in the application 
of words. None of them came up to their French contemporaries 
in purity and correctness ; and their successors, who are more 



584 WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 

grammatical, are weak competitors with the rival nation for those 
compact and beautiful possessions. De Foe has a greater variety 
of powers than they, and he far outstrips in vigour and vivacity 
all the other pedestrians who started with him. He spells some 
words commendably, others not. Of the former are onely, admitt, 
referr, supplie, relie, searcht, wisht ; of the latter pcrticulars, 
pcrusall, speciall, valines. Hurd, very minute and fastidious, in 
like manner writes often reprehensibly, though oftener well. Do 
you tolerate his " catched." 

Johnson. Sir, I was teached better. 

Tooke. He also writes " under these circumstances." 

Johnson. Circumstances are things round about ; we are in them, 
not under them. 

Tooke. We find "those who had rather trust to the equity" 
for " would rather." 5 I believe he is the last writer who uses the 
word wit for understanding, although we continue to say " he is 
out of his wits. He very properly says encomiums, to avoid a 
Grecism. We never say " rhododendnz," but " rhododendron." 
In our honest old English, all's well that ends well : and encomi- 
ums, phenomenons, memorandums, sound thoroughly and fully 
English. Hurd is less so in his use of the word counterfeit, which 
we are accustomed to take in an unfavorable sense. "Alexander 
suffered none but an Apelles and a Lysippus to cou?iterfeit the 
form and features of his person." The sentence is moreover lax. 
I am glad, however, to find that he writes subtile instead of subtle. 
He has the merit too of using hath instead of has, in many places, 
but is so negligent as to omit it sometimes before a word begin- 
ning with s, or ce and ci, and ex. This is less bad than before th. 
Like Middleton, he writes chast. 

5 Landor here makes an erroneous criticism. See Dr. Fitzedward Hall's 
article in American Journal of Philology, II. 308 ff., for examples from 
fifteenth century on. In footnote to p. 314, Hall says, " Had rather, however it 
may be in conversation, has gradually been falling into disfavour with the best 
authors, during the last eighty years. Lord Macaulay uses it only three times." 
It is good English, and should not be allowed to disappear. 



DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 585 

Johnson. Improperly. Nobody writes wast for waste. In all 
such words the vowel is pronounced long, which his spelling would 
contract. Dr. Hurd writes plainly, and yet not ignobly. His 
criticisms are always sensible, never acute ; his language clear, but 
never harmonious. 

Tooke. We cease to look for Eloquence ; she vanished at the 
grave of Milton. 

Johnson. Enough of Milton. Praise the French, sir ! A repub- 
lican is never so much at his ease as among slaves. 

Tooke. We must lead happy lives then. But you were pleased 
to designate us as enemies to greatness and stability. What is it I 
admire in Milton but the greatness of his soul and the stability of 
his glory? Transitory is everything else on earth. The minutest 
of worms corrodes the throne ; a slimier consumes what sat upon 
it yesterday. I know not the intentions and designs of others. I 
know not whether I myself am so virtuous that I should be called 
a republican, or so intelligent that I should be called a reformer. 
In regard to stability, I do however think I could demonstrate to 
you, that what has a broad basis is more stabile than what has a 
narrow one, and that nothing is gained to solidity by top-heavi- 
ness. In regard to greatness, I doubt my ability to convince you. 
Much in this is comparative. Compared with the plain, the 
mountains are indeed high : compared with what is above them in 
the universe of space, they are atoms and invisibilities. Such too 
are mortals. I do not say the creatures of the cannon-foundry and 
the cutlery : I do not say those of the jeweller and toyman, from 
whom we exclude light as from infants in a fever, and to whom 
we speak as to drunken men to make them quiet ; but the most 
intellectual we ever have conversed with. What are they in com- 
parison with a Shakespeare or a Bacon or a Newton ? You how- 
ever seemed to refer to power only. I have not meditated on this 
subject so much as you have, and my impression from it is weaker : 
nevertheless I do presume to be as hearty and as firm a supporter 
of it, removing (as I would do) the incumbrances from about it, 
and giving it ventilation. 



586 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

Johnson. Ventilation ! yes, forsooth ! from the bellows of Brontes 
and Steropes and Pyracmon. 

Tooke. Come, Doctor, let us throw a little more dust on our 
furnace, which blazes fiercelier than our work requires. The 
word firy comes appositely : why do we write it fiery, when wire 
gives wiry ? The word rushed into my mind out of Shakespeare, 

" And the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods." 6 

Truly this would be a very odd species of delight. But Shake- 
speare never wrote such nonsense : he wrote delighted (whence 
our blighted), struck by lightning: a fit preparation for such 
bathing. Why do we write lieutenant, when we write, " I would 
as lief?'''' Would there be any impropriety or inconvenience in 
writing end^v^r and demeanor as we write tenor, omitting the u ? 

Johnson. Then you would imitate cards of invitation, where we 
find favor and honor. 

Tooke. We find ancestor and author and editor and inventor 
in the works of Doctor Jonson, who certainly bears no resemblance 
to a card of invitation. Why can not we place all these words on 
the same bench? Most people will give us credit for knowing 
that they are derived from the Latin ; but the wisest will think us 
fools for ending them like hour, sour, and flour, pronounced so 
differently. I look upon it as a piece of impudence to think we 
can correct the orthography of such writers as Selden and Milton. 
They wrote not only hotwr, favor, labor, but likewise b'rest, lookt, 
and unlooktjor, kinde, minde. To spell these differently is a gross 
absurdity. 

Johnson. By removing a single letter from the holy word 
Saviour, you would shock the piety of millions. 

Tooke. In that word there is an analogy with others, although 
the class is small : paviour and behaviour, for instance. 

Johnson. It now occurs to one that honor was spelt without 

6 Measure for Measure, III. I, 121. 



DIALOGUES OF LITER aRY MEN. 



SS7 



the u in the reign of Charles L, with it under his successor. Per- 
haps armour should be armure, from the low Latin armatura. 

Tooke. If we must use such words as reverie, why not oblige 
them to conform with their predecessors, travesty and gaiety, which 
should have the y instead of the i. When we, following Cowley, 
write pindarique, we are laughed at; but nobody laughs at pictu- 
resque and antique, which are equally reducible to order. 

Johnson. It is an awful thing to offend the Genius of our lan- 
guage. We can not spell our words as the French spell theirs. 
No other people in the world could reduce to nothing so stiff and 
stubborn a letter as x, which they do in mux. 

Tooke. We never censure them for writing careme, which they 
formerly wrote caresme, more anciently quaresme, and other words 
similarly : yet they have one language for writing, another for 
speaking, and affect a semblance of grammatical construction by 
a heap of intractable letters. While three suffice with us (a, 
m,a), they use eight (aimaient), of which the greater part not 
only are unprofitable, but would, in any language on earth, express 
a sound, or sounds, totally different from what they stand for : r, 
s, t, end words whose final sound is our a. We never censure the 
Italians for writing ricetto, as they pronounce it, without a /, and 
Benedetto without a c : we never shudder at the danger they incur 
of losing the traces of derivation. The most beautiful and easy of 
languages assumes no appearance of strength by the display of 
harshness, nor would owe its preservation to rust. Let us always 
be analogical when we can be so without offence to pronunciation. 
There are some few words in which we are retentive of the Nor- 
man laws. We write island with an s, as if we feared to be 
thought ignorant of its derivation. 7 If we must be reverential to 
custom, let it rather be in the presence of the puisne judge. 
There are only the words puisne, isle, island, demesne, viscount 
and the family name Grosvenor, in which an s is unsounded I 
would omit it in these. The French have set us an example here 
rejecting the useless letter. They also write dette, which we write 

7 Its derivation, as well as its pronunciation, would require the omission of s. 



588 WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 

"debt." I know not why we should often use the letter b where 
we do. We have no need of it in crumb and coomb ; the original 
words being without it. 

Johnson. King Charles I. writes dout. In the same sentence 
he writes where/or. But to such authority such men as you re- 
fuse allegiance even in language. Your coomb is sterile, and your 
crumb is dry ; as such minutenesses must always be. 

Tooke. So are nuts ; but we crack and eat them. They are 
good for the full and for those only. 

Johnson. The old writers had strange and arbitrary ways of 
spelling, which makes them appear more barbarous than they 
really are. There are learned men who would be grieved to see 
removed from words the traces of their origin. 

Tooke. There are learned men who are triflers and inconsider- 
ate. Learning, by its own force alone, will never remove a pre- 
judice or establish a truth. Of what importance is it to us that we 
have derived these words from the Latin through the French? 
We do not preserve the termination of either. Formerly if many 
unnecessary letters were employed, some were omitted. Ea and 
oa were unusual. In various instances the spelling of Chaucer is 
more easy and graceful and elegant than the modern. He avoids 
the diphthong in coat, green, keen, sheaf, goat; writing cote, grene, 
kene, shefe, gote. Sackville, remarkable for diligence and dainti- 
ness of composition, spells "delights" delites, and "shriek" 
shreek. He also writes bemone, brest, yeeld. What we foolishly 
write work was formerly spelt werke, as we continue to pronounce 
it. Formerly there was such a word as shetv ; we still write it, 
but we pronounce it show, and we should never spell it otherwise. 
There is another of daily occurrence which we spell amiss, al- 
though we pronounce it rightly. Coxcomb in reality is cockscomb, 
and Ben Jonson writes it so, adding an e. He who first wrote it 
with an x certainly did not know how to spell his own name. In 
a somewhat like manner we have changed our pennies into pence 
and our acquaintants into acquaintance. Now what have these 
gained by such exchange? Latter!" we have run into more un- 



DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 5S9 

accountable follies ; such as compel for compell, and I have seen 
inter for interr. Nobody ever pronounces the last syllables of 
these words short, as the spelling would indicate. You would be 
induced to believe such writers are ignorant that their inter and 
our enter are of a different stock. In the reign of Charles I. 
parliament was usually, though not universally, spelt partem en t: 
how much more properly ! What we write door and floor the 
learned and judicious Jonson wrote dore and flore. I find in his 
writings cotes, prof est, spred, partrich, grone, herth, theater, for- 
raine, diamant, phesants, mushromes, banisht, rapt, rackt, addrest, 
ake, spred, stomack, plee, strein (song), windore, fild (filled), 
monimenf, beleeve, yeeld, scepter, sute (from sue), mist (missed), 
grone, crackt, throte, yong, harbor, harth, oke, cruze, crost, markt, 
?ninde, (which it is just as absurd to write mind, as it would be to 
write time tint), taught, banisht, cherish t, heapt, thankt. It is 
wonderful that so learned a man should be ignorant that spitals 
are hospitals. He writes : " Spittles, post-houses, hospitals." Had 
he spelt the first properly, as he has done all the other words, he 
could not have made this mistake. Fairfax writes vew, bow 
(bough), mihte, winde, oke, spred, talkt, embrast. Fleming, in 
his translation of the Georgics, He, oke, anent ; (which latter word 
now a Scotticism, is used by Philemon Holland) ; gote, fee Id, 
yeeld, spindel. Drayton, and most of our earlier writers, instead 
of thigh, write thie. Milton in the Allegro, 

Where the bee with honied thie. 

I perceive that you yourself, in your letter to Lord Chesterfield, 
have several times written the word til ; and I am astonished that 
the propriety of it is not generally acknowledged after so weighty 
an authority. Sent, for scent, is to be found in old writers, follow- 
ing the derivation. There are several words now obsolete which 
are more elegant and harmonious than those retained instead. 
Gentleness and idleness are hardly so beautiful as Chaucer's gen- 
tilesse and idlesse. We retain the word lessen, but we have dropped 
greaten. Formerly good authors knew its value. 



590 WALTER SAVAGE LA. YD OR. 

I wish 1 were as sure that 

Multa renascentur qua jam cecidere, 
as I am that 

c a dent que 
Qua nunc sun/ in honore vocabula? 

I am unacquainted with any language in which, during the pros- 
perity of a people, the changes have run so seldom into improve- 
ment, so perpetually into impropriety. Within another generation, 
ours must have become so corrupt, that writers, if they hope for 
life, will find it necessary to mount up nearer to its sources. 

Johnson. And what will they do when they get there? The 
leather from the stiff old jerkin will look queerly in its patches on 
the frayed satin. 

Tooke. Good writers will suppress the violence of contrast. 
They will rather lay aside what by its impurity never had much 
weight, than what has lost it by the attrition of time ; and they 
will be sparing of such expressions as are better for curiosities than 
for utensils. You and I would never say " by that means " instead 
of these; nor "an alms"; yet Addison does. He also says a 
"dish of coffee," yet coffee never was offered in a dish, unless it 
was done by the fox to the crane after the dinner he gave her. 
We hear of our lyrical poetry, of our senate, of our manes, of our 
ashes, of our bards, of our British Muse. Luckily the ancients 
could never run into these fooleries ; but their judgment was ren- 
dered by discipline too exact for the admission of them. Only 
one valuable word has been received into our language since my 
birth, or perhaps since yours. I have lately heard appreciate for 
estimate. 

Johnson. I am an antigallican in speech as in sentiments. 
What we have fairly won from the French let us keep, and avoid 
their new words like their new fashions. Words taken from them 
should be amenable, in their spelling, to English laws and regula- 
tions. Appreciate is a good and useful one ; it signifies more 

8 Many words u>i 11 revive which have now fallen out of use, and will fall 
which are now in honor. — II< (RACE, Ars J'oelica, 70. 71. 



DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 591 

than estitnate or value ; it implies to " value jus thy All words are 
good which come when they are wanted ; all which come when 
they are not wanted, should be dismissed. 

Tooke. Let us return from new words to the old spelling of 
Benjamin Jonson, which other learned men followed : deprest, 
speke, grete, fede, reso?i, reper, sheves, relefe, leve, grene, ivether, 
erthe, breth, seke, seson, sege, meke, stepe, rome, appere, dere, throte, 
to the, betwene, swete, deth, hele, chere, nere, frende, tretise, teche, 
cone eve, tonge, be re, spec he, stere. Altogether there are about forty 
words, out of which the unnecessary diphthong is ejected. He 
always omits the s in island and isle ; he writes sovrane, subtil, 
childe, and werke. He would no more have written sceptre than 
quivre. 

Johnson. Milton too avoided the diphthong : he wrote drede 
and redy. Mandeville wrote dede, and gram of incense. 

Tooke. You tell us that the letter c never ends a word accord- 
ing to English orthography ; yet it did formerly both in words of 
Saxon origin and British, as Eric, Rod-eric, Caradoc, Madoc. 
J Fen lock, the name of a town in Shropshire, formerly ended in c, 
and Hume always writes Warwic. 

Johnson. Sir, do not quote infidels to me. Would you write 
sic and quic ? 

Tooke. I would if we derived them from the Greek or Latin. 
Johnson. Without the authority of Ben Jonson, on whom you 
so relie? 

Tooke. There is in Jonson strong sense, and wit too strong ; it 
wants airiness, ease, and volatility. I do not admire his cast-iron 
ornaments, retaining but little (and that rugged and coarse-grained) 
of the ancient models, and nothing of the workmanship. But I 
admire his judgment in the spelling of many words, and I wish we 
could return to it. In others we are afraid of being as English as 
we might be and as we ought to be. Some appear to have been 
vulgarisms which are no longer such. By vulgarism I mean what 
is unfounded on ratiocination or necessity : for instance, under- 
neath. 



592 WALTER SAVAGE LAND OR. 

Johnson. Our best writers have used it. 

Tooke. They have ; and wisely ; for it has risen up before them 
in sacred places, and it brings with it serious recollections. It was 
inscribed on the peasant's gravestone, long before it shone amid 
heraldic emblems in the golden line of Jonson, ushering in 

" Pembroke's sister, Sydney's mother." 9 

Beside, it is significant and euphonious. Either half conveys the 
full meaning of the whole. But it is silly to argue that we gain 
ground by shortening on all occasions the syllables of a sentence. 
Half a minute, if indeed so much is requisite, is well spent in clear- 
ness, in fulness, and pleasureableness of expression, and in engag- 
ing the ear to carry a message to the understanding. Whilst is 
another vulgarism which authors have adopted, the last letter 
being added improperly. While is " the time when"; whiles 
" the timer when." 10 

Johnson. I am inclined to pay little attention to such fastidious- 
ness, nor does it matter a straw whether we use the double e in- 
stead of ete in sweet, and the other words you recited from good 
authors. But I now am reminded that near is nigher, by Sir 
Thomas More writing " never the nere." However, you are not 
to suppose that I undervalue the authority of Benjamin Jonson. I 
find sometimes his poetry unsatisfactory and troublesome ; but his 
prose is much better, and now and then almost harmonious ; which 
his verses never are for half a dozen lines together. 

Tooke. I know little about poetry ; but it appears to me that in 
his, where he has not the ague, he has the cramp. Nearly all 
his thoughts are stolen. The prettiest of his poems, 

" Drink to me only with thy eyes," 

is paraphrased from Scaliger's version of Aristaenetus. He col- 
lected much spoil from his campaign in the Low Countries of 

9 From Jonson's " Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke," beginning " Un- 
derneath this sable hearse," — but Landor, or his editor, has accidentally mis- 
placed " Pembroke's " and " Sydney's." 

10 Another etymological error. It is an old genitive case. 






DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 593 

Literature. However, his English for the most part is admirable, 
and was justly looked up to until Milton rose, overshadowing all 
England, all Italy, and all Greece. Since that great man's depart- 
ure we have had nothing (in style I mean) at all remarkable. 
Locke and Defoe were the most purely English : and you your- 
self, who perhaps may not admire their simplicity, must absolve 
them from the charge of innovation. I perceive that you prefer 
the spelling of our gentlemen and ladies now flourishing to that 
not only of Middleton but of Milton. 

Johnson. Before I say a word about either, I shall take the lib- 
erty, Sir, to reprehend your unreasonable admiration of such writ- 
ers as Defoe and Locke. What, pray, have they added to the 
dignity or the affluence of our language ? 

Tooke. I would gladly see our language enriched as far as it 
can be without depraving it. At present we recur to the Latin and 
reject the Saxon. This is strengthening our language just as our 
empire is strengthened, by severing from it the most flourishing of 
its provinces. In another age we may cut down the branches of 
the Latin to admit the Saxon to shoot up again ; for opposites 
come perpetually round. But it would be folly to throw away a 
current and commodious piece of money because of the stamp 
upon it, or to refuse an accession to an estate because our grand- 
father could do without it. A book composed of merely Saxon 
words (if indeed such a thing could be) would only prove the 
perverseness of the author. It would be inelegant, inharmonious, 
and deficient in the power of conveying thoughts and images, of 
which indeed such a writer could have but extremely few at start- 
ing. Let the Saxon however be always the groundwork. 11 

11 Lack of space will not permit further selection, but the sticklers for our 
present irrational spelling would do well to read these dialogues of Johnson and 
Tooke, as well as those of Hare and Landor. 



XXX. 

LEIGH HUNT. 

(1784-1859.) 

AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, " WHAT IS POETRY?" 

Including Remarks on Versification. 1 

[Written in 1844.] 

Poetry, strictly and artistically so called, that is to say, con- 
sidered not merely as poetic feeling, which is more or less shared 
by all the world, but as the operation of that feeling, such as we 
see it in the poet's book, is the utterance of a passion for truth, 
beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by 
imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the prin- 
ciple of variety in uniformity. Its means are whatever the uni- 
verse contains ; and its ends, pleasure and exaltation. Poetry 
stands between nature and convention, keeping alive among us 
the enjoyment of the external and the spiritual world : it has con- 
stituted the most enduring fame of nations ; and, next to Love 
and Beauty, which are its parents, is the greatest proof to man of 
the pleasure to be found in all things, and of the probable riches 
of infinitude. Poetry is a passion, because it seeks the deepest 
impressions ; and because it must undergo, in order to convey 
them. 

It is a passion for truth, because without truth the impression 
would be false or defective. 

It is a passion for beauty, because its office is to exalt and refine 

1 The introduction to Leigh Hunt's selections from the English Poets, 
entitled Imagination and Fancy. 

594 



ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETRY?" 595 

by means of pleasure, and because beauty is nothing but the love- 
liest form of pleasure. 

It is a passion for power, because power is impression trium- 
phant, whether over the poet, as desired by himself, or over the 
reader, as affected by the poet. 

It embodies and illustrates its impressions by imagination, or 
images of the objects of which it treats, and other images brought 
in to throw light on those objects, in order that it may enjoy and 
impart the feeling of their truth in its utmost conviction and 
affluence. 

It illustrates them by fancy, which is a lighter play of imagina- 
tion, or the feeling of analogy coming short of seriousness, in 
order that it may laugh with what it loves, and show how it can 
decorate it with fairy ornament. 

It modulates what it utters, because in running the whole round 
of beauty it must needs include beauty of sound ; and because, in 
the height of its enjoyment, it must show the perfections of its tri- 
umph, and make difficulty itself become part of its facility and joy. 

And lastly, Poetry shapes this modulation into uniformity for its 
outline, and variety for its parts, because it thus realizes the last 
idea of beauty itself, which includes the charm of diversity within 
the flowing round of habit and ease. 

Poetry is imaginative passion. The quickest and subtlest test 
of the possession of its essence is in expression ; the variety of 
things to be expressed shows the amount of its resources ; and 
the continuity of the song completes the evidence of its strength 
and greatness. He who has thought, feeling, expression, imagina- 
tion, action, character and continuity, all in the largest amount and 
highest degree, is the greatest poet. 

Poetry includes whatsoever of painting can be made visible to 
the mind's eye, and whatsoever of music can be conveyed by 
sound and proportion without singing or instrumentation. But it 
far surpasses those divine arts, in suggestiveness, range, and in- 
tellectual wealth ; — the first, in expression of thought, combina- 
tion of images, and the triumph over space and time ; the second, 



596 LEIGH HUNT. 

in all that can be done by speech, apart from the tones and mod- 
ulations of pure sound. Painting and music, however, include all 
those portions of the gift of poetry that can be expressed and 
heightened by the visible and melodious. Painting, in a certain 
apparent manner, is things themselves ; music, in a certain audible 
manner, is their very emotion and grace. Music and painting are 
proud to be related to poetry, and poetry loves and is proud of 
them. 

Poetry begins where matter of fact or of science ceases to 
be merely such, and to exhibit a further truth ; that is to say, 
the connection it has with the world of emotion, and its power 
to produce imaginative pleasure. Inquiring of a gardener, for 
instance, what flower it is we see yonder, he answers, " A lily." 
This is matter of fact. The botanist pronounces it to be of the 
order of " Hexandria monogynia." This is matter of science. It 
is the " lady " of the garden, says Spenser ; and here we begin to 
have a poetical sense of its fairness and grace. It is 

The plant and flower of light, 

says Ben Jonson ; and poetry then shows us the beauty of the 
flower in all its mystery and splendour. 

If it be asked, how we know perceptions like these to be true, 
the answer is, by the fact of their existence, — by the consent and 
delight of poetic readers. And as feeling is the earliest teacher, 
and perception the only final proof of things the most demon- 
strable by science, so the remotest imaginations of the poets may 
often be found to have the closest connection with matter of fact ; 
perhaps might always be so, if the subtlety of our perceptions 
were a match for the causes of them. Consider this image of Ben 
Jonson's — of a lily being the flower of light. Light, undecom- 
posed, is white ; and as the lily is white, and light is white, and 
whiteness itself is nothing but light, the two things, so far, are not 
merely similar, but identical. A poet might add, by an analogy 
drawn from the connexion of light and colour, that there is a 
" golden dawn " issuing out of the white lily, in the rich yellow of 



ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, " WHAT IS POETRY 7" 597 

the stamens. I have no desire to push this similarity farther than 
it may be worth. Enough has been stated to show that, in poet- 
ical as in other analogies, « the same feet of nature," as Bacon 
says, may be seen " treading in different paths "• and the most 
scornful, that is to say, dullest disciple of fact, should be cautious 
how he betrays the shallowness of his philosophy by discerning 
no poetry in its depths. 

But the poet is far from dealing only with these subtle and 
analogical truths. Truth of every kind belongs to him, provided 
it can bud into any kind of beauty, or is capable of being illus- 
trated and impressed by the poetic faculty. Nay, the simplest 
truth is often so beautiful and impressive of itself, that one of the 
greatest proofs of his genius consists in his leaving it to stand 
alone, illustrated by nothing but the light of its own tears or smiles, 
its own wonder, might, or playfulness. Hence the complete 
effect of many a simple passage in our old English ballads and 
romances, and of the passionate sincerity in general of the greatest 
early poets, such as Homer and Chaucer, who flourished before 
the existence of a " literary world," and were not perplexed by 
a heap of notions and opinions, or by doubts how emotion ought 
to be expressed. The greatest of their successors never write 
equally to the purpose, except when they can dismiss everything 
from their minds but the like simple truth. In the beautiful 
poem of Sir Eger, Sir Graham, and Sir Gray-Steel (see it in 
Ellis's Specimens, or Laing's Early Metrical Tales), a knight 
thinks himself disgraced in the eyes of his mistress : — 

Sir Eger said, " If it be so, 
Then wot I well I must forego 
Love-liking, and manhood, all clean?" 
The water rush'd out of his een ! 

Sir Gray-Steel is killed : — 

Gray-Steel into his death thus thraws (throes?) 

He waiters (welters, — throws himself about) and the grass up draws; 



598 LEIGH HUNT. 

A little while then lay he still 
{Friends that him saw, liked full ill) 
And bled into his armour bright. 

The abode of Chaucer's Reve, or Steward, in the Canterbury 
Tales, is painted in two lines which nobody ever wished longer ; — 

His wonning (dwelling) was full fair upon an heath, 
With greeny trees yshadowed was his place. 

Every one knows the words of Lear, " most matter-of-fact, most 

melancholy " : 

Pray do not mock me : 
I am a very foolish fond old man, 
Fourscore and upward : 

Not an hour more, nor less; and, to deal plainly, 
I fear, I am not in my perfect mind. 

It is thus by exquisite pertinence, melody, and the implied power 
of writing with exuberance, if need be, that beauty and truth be- 
come identical in poetry, and that pleasure, or at the very worst, a 
balm in our tears, is drawn out of pain. 

It is a great and rare thing, and shows a lovely imagination, 

when the poet can write a commentary, as it were, of his own, on 

such sufficing passages of nature, and be thanked for the addition. 

There is an instance of this kind in Warner, an old Elizabethan 

poet, than which I know nothing sweeter in the world. He is 

speaking of Fair Rosamond, and of a blow given her by Queen 

Eleanor : 

With that she dash'd her on the lips, 

So dyid double red : 
Hard was the heart that gave the bloiu, 

Soft were those lips that bled. 

There are different kinds and degrees of imagination, some of 
them necessary to the formation of every true poet, and all of 
them possessed by the greatest. Perhaps they may be enumer- 
ated as follows : — First, that which presents to the mind any ob- 
ject or circumstance in every-day life ; as when we imagine a man 






ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETRY 7" 599 

holding a sword, or looking out of a window ; — Second, that 
which presents real, but not every-day circumstances ; as King 
Alfred tending the loaves, or Sir Philip Sidney giving up the water 
to the dying soldier ; — Third, that which combines character and 
events directly imitated from real life with imitative realities of its 
own invention ; as the probable parts of the histories of Priam and 
Macbeth, or what may be called natural fiction as distinguished 
from supernatural ; — Fourth, that which conjures up things and 
events not to be found in nature ; as Homer's gods, and Shak- 
speare's witches, enchanted horses and spears, Ariosto's hippogriff, 
&c. ; — Fifth, that which, in order to illustrate or aggravate one 
image, introduces another : sometimes in simile, as when Homer 
compares Apollo descending in his wrath at noon-day to the com- 
ing of night-time ; sometimes in metaphor, or simile comprised in 
a word, as in Milton's " motes that people the sunbeams " ; some- 
times in concentrating into a word the main history of any person 
or thing, past or even future, as in the " starry Galileo " of Byron, 
and that ghastly foregone conclusion of the epithet " murdered " 
applied to the yet living victim in Keats's story from Boccaccio, — 

So the two brothers and their murder' d man, 
Rode towards fair Florence; 

sometimes in the attribution of a certain representative quality 
which makes one circumstance stand for others ; as in Milton's 
grey-fly winding its "sultry horn," which epithet contains the heat 
of a summer's day ; — Sixth, that which reverses this process, and 
makes a variety of circumstances take colour from one, like nature 
seen with jaundiced or glad eyes, or under the influence of storm 
or sunshine ; as when in Lycidas, or the Greek pastoral poets, the 
flowers and the flocks are made to sympathize with a man's death ; 
or, in the Italian poet, the river flowing by the sleeping Angelica 
seems talking of love — 

Parea che l'erba le fiorisse intorno, 
E d' amor ragionasse quella riva ! 2 

Orlando Innamorato, canto iii. 
2 It seemed that the grass rvas blooming around her, and that bank zvas talk- 
ing of love. 



600 LEIGH HUNT. 

or in the voluptuous homage paid to the sleeping Imogen by the 
very light in the chamber and the reaction of her own beauty upon 
itself; or in the "witch element" of. the tragedy of Macbeth and 
the May-day night of Faust ; — Seventh, and last, that which by 
a single expression, apparently of the vaguest kind, not only meets 
but surpasses in its effect the extremest force of the most particu- 
lar description ; as in that exquisite passage of Coleridge's Christa- 
bel, where the unsuspecting object of the witch's malignity is 
bidden to go to bed : — 

Quoth Christabel, So let it be ! 
And as the lady bade, did she. 
Her gentle limbs did she undress, 

And lay down in her loveliness : — 

a perfect verse surely, both for feeling and music. The very 
smoothness and gentleness of the limbs in the series of the 
letter /'s. 

I am aware of nothing of the kind surpassing that most lovely 
inclusion of physical beauty in moral, neither can I call to mind 
any instances of the imagination that turns accompaniments into 
accessories, superior to those I have alluded to. Of the class of 
comparison, one of the most touching (many a tear must it have 
drawn from parents and lovers) is in a stanza which has been 
copied into the Friar of Orders Grey, out of Beaumont and 

Fletcher : — 

Weep no more, lady, Weep no more, 

Thy sorrow is in vain; 
For violets pluck 'd the sweetest showers 
Will ne'er make grow again. 

And Shakspeare and Milton abound in the very grandest ; such as 
Antony's likening his changing fortunes to the cloud-rack ; Lear's 
appeal to the old age of the heavens ; Satan's appearance in the 
horizon, like a fleet " hanging in the clouds " ; and the comparisons 
of him with the comet and the eclipse. Nor unworthy of their 
glorious company, for its extraordinary combination of delicacy 
and vastness, is that enchanting one of Shelley's in the Adonais : — 






ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETRY?" 601 

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of eternity, 

I multiply these particulars in order to impress upon the reader's 
mind the great importance of imagination in all its phases, as a 
constituent part of the highest poetic faculty. 

The happiest instance I remember of imaginative metaphor is 
Shakspeare's moonlight " sleeping " on a bank ; but half his poetry 
may be said to be made up of it, metaphor indeed being the 
common coin of discourse. Of imaginary creatures none, out of 
the pale of mythology and the East, are equal, perhaps, in point 
of invention, to Shakspeare's Ariel and Caliban ; though poetry 
may grudge to prose the discovery of a Fringed Woman, espe- 
cially such as she has been described by her inventor in the story 
of Peter Wilkins ; 3 and in point of treatment, the Mammon and 
Jealousy of Spenser, some of the monsters in Dante, particularly 
his Nimrod, his interchangements of creatures into one another, 
and (if I am not presumptuous in anticipating what I think will 
be the verdict of posterity) the Witch in Coleridge's Christabel, 
may rank even with the creations of Shakspeare. It may be 
doubted, indeed, whether Shakspeare had bile and nightmare 
enough in him to have thought of such detestable horrors as those 
of the interchanging adversaries (now serpent, now man) , or even 
of the huge, half-blockish enormity of Nimrod, — in Scripture, the 
" mighty hunter " and builder of the tower of Babel, — in Dante, 
a tower of a man in his own person, standing with some of his 
brother giants up to the middle in a pit in hell, blowing a horn to 
which a thunder-clap is a whisper, and hallooing after Dante and 
his guide in the jargon of a lost tongue ! The transformations 
are too odious to quote ; but of the towering giant we cannot 
refuse ourselves the " fearful joy " of a specimen. It was twilight, 
Dante tells us, and he and his guide Virgil were silently pacing 
through one of the dreariest regions of hell, when the sound of a 
tremendous horn made him turn all his attention to the spot from 

3 Written by Robert Pultock about 1750. See Wheeler's Vocabulary in 
Appendix to Webster's Dictionary. 



602 LEIGH HUNT. 

which it came. He there discovered, through the dusk, what 
seemed to be the towers of a city. Those are no towers, said his 
guide \ they are giants standing up to the middle in one of these 
circular pits : 4 

I looked again ; and as the eye makes out, 

By little and little, what the mist conceal'd, 

In which, till clearing up, the sky was steep'd; 

So, looming through the gross and darksome air, 

As we drew nigh, those mighty bulks grew plain, 

And error quitted me, and terror join'd : 

For in like manner as all round its height 

Montereggione crowns itself with towers, 

So tower'd above the circuit of that pit, 

Though but half out of it, and half within, 

The horrible giants that fought Jove, and still 

Are threaten'd when he thunders. As we near'd 

The foremost, I discern'd his mighty face, 

His shoulders, breast, and more than half his trunk, 

With both the arms down hanging by the sides. 

His face appear'd to me, in length and breadth, 

Huge as St. Peter's pinnacle at Rome, 

And of a like proportion all his bones. 

He open'd, as we went, his dreadful mouth, 

Fit for no sweeter psalmody; and shouted 

After us, in the words of some strange tongue, 

" Rafel ma-ee amech zabee almee ! — " 

" Dull wretch ! " my leader cried, " keep to thine horn, 

And so vent better whatsoever rage 

Or other passion stuff thee. Feel thy throat 

And find the chain upon thee, thou confusion ! 

Lo ! what a hoop is clench'd about thy gorge." 

Then turning to myself he said, " His howl 

Is its own mockery. This is Nimrod, he 

Through whose ill thought it was that human kind 

Were tongue-confounded. Pass him, and say nought : 

For as he speaketh language known of none, 

So none can speak save jargon to himself." 



* Hunt quotes here the Inferno, canto xxxi. verse 34 et seq., and translates it. 






ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETRY?" 603 

Assuredly it could not have been easy to find a fiction so un- 
Couthly terrible as this in the hypochondria of Hamlet. Even his 
father had evidently seen no such ghost in the other world. All 
his phantoms were in the world he had left. Timon, Lear, Richard, 
Brutus, Prospero, Macbeth himself, none of Shakspeare's men 
had, in fact, any thought but of the earth they lived on, whatever 
supernatural fancy crossed them. The thing fancied was still a 
thing of this world, " in its habit as it lived," or no remoter ac- 
quaintance than a witch or a fairy. Its lowest depths (unless 
Dante suggested them) were the cellars under the stage. Caliban 
himself is a cross-breed between a witch and a clown. No of- 
fence to Shakspeare : who was not bound to be the greatest of 
healthy poets, and to have every morbid inspiration besides. 
What he might have done, had he set his wits to compete with 
Dante, I know not : all I know is, that in the infernal line he did 
nothing like him ; and it is not to be wished he had. It is far 
better that, as a higher, more universal, and more beneficent 
variety of the genus Poet, he should have been the happier man 
he was, and left us the plump cheeks on his monument, instead of 
the carking visage of the great, but over-serious, and comparatively 
one-sided Florentine. Even the imagination of Spenser, whom 
we take to have been a " nervous gentleman " compared with 
Shakspeare, was visited with no such dreams as Dante. Or, if it 
was, he did not choose to make himself thinner (as Dante says he 
did) with dwelling upon them. He had twenty visions of nymphs 
and bowers, to one of the mud of Tartarus. Chaucer, for all he 
was "a man of this world" as well as the poets' world, and as 
great, perhaps a greater enemy of oppression than Dante, besides 
being one of the profoundest masters of pathos that ever lived, 
had not the heart to conclude the story of the famished father and 
his children, as finished by the inexorable anti-Pisan. But enough 
of Dante in this place. Hobbes, in order to daunt the reader from 
objecting to his friend Davenant's want of invention, says of these 
fabulous creations in general, in his letter prefixed to the poem of 
Gondibert, that " impenetrable armours, enchanted castles, invul- 



604 LEIGH HUNT. 

nerable bodies, iron men, flying horses, and a thousand other such 
things, are easily feigned by them that dare." 

These are girds at Spenser and Ariosto. But, with leave of 
Hobbes (who translated Homer as if on purpose to show what 
execrable verses could be written by a philosopher), enchanted 
castles and flying horses are not easily feigned, as Ariosto and 
Spenser feigned them ; and that just makes all the difference. For 
proof, see the accounts of Spenser's enchanted castle in Book the 
Third, Canto Twelfth, of the Fairy Queen ; and let the reader of 
Italian open the Orlando Furioso at its first introduction of the 
Hippogriff (canto iv. st. 3), where Bradamante, coming to an inn, 
hears a great noise, and sees all the people looking up at some- 
thing in the air ; upon which, looking up herself she sees a knight 
in shining armour riding towards the sunset upon a creature with 
variegated wings, and then dipping and disappearing among the 
hills. Chaucer's steed of brass, that was 

So horsly and so quick of eye, 

is copied from the life. You might pat him and feel his brazen 
muscles. Hobbes, in objecting to what he thought childish, made 
a childish mistake. His criticism is just such as a boy might 
pique himself upon, who was educated on mechanical principles, 
and thought he had outgrown his Goody Two-shoes. With a 
wonderful dimness of discernment in poetic matters, considering 
his acuteness in others, he fancies he has settled the question by 
pronouncing such creations "impossible" ! 

To the brazier they are impossible, no doubt ; but not to the 
poet. Their possibility, if the poet wills it, is to be conceded ; 
the problem is, the creature being given, how to square its actions 
with probability, according to the nature assumed of it. Hobbes 
did not see that the skill and beauty of these fictions lay in bring- 
ing them within those very regions of truth and likelihood in 
which he thought they could not exist. Hence the serpent Py- 
thon of Chaucer, 



Sleeping against the sun tipon a day, 






ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETRY ?» 605 

when Apollo slew him. Hence the chariot- drawing dolphins of 
Spenser, softly swimming along the shore lest they should hurt 
themselves against the stones and gravel. Hence Shakspeare's 
Ariel, living under blossoms, and riding at evening on the bat ; 
and his domestic namesake in the Rape of the Lock (the imagi- 
nation of the drawing-room) saving a lady's petticoat from the 
coffee with his plumes, and directing atoms of snuff into a cox- 
comb's nose. In the Orlando Furioso (canto xv. st. 65) is a 
wild story of a cannibal necromancer, who laughs at being cut to 
pieces, coming together again like quicksilver, and picking up his 
head when it is cut off, sometimes by the hair, sometimes by the 
nose ! This, which would be purely ridiculous in the hands of an 
inferior poet, becomes interesting, nay grand, in Ariosto's, from 
the beauties of his style, and its conditional truth to nature. The 
monster has a fated hair on his head, — a single hair, — which 
must be taken from it before he can be killed. Decapitation 
itself is of no consequence, without that proviso. The Paladin 
Astolfo, who has fought this phenomenon on horseback, and suc- 
ceeded in getting the head and galloping off with it, is therefore 
still at a loss what to be at. How is he to discover such a 
needle in such a bottle of hay ? The trunk is spurring after him 
to recover it, and he seeks for some evidence of the hair in vain. 
At length he bethinks him of scalping the head. He does so ; 
and the moment the operation arrives at the place of the hair, the 
face of the head becomes pale, the eyes turn in their sockets, and 
the lifeless pursuer tumbles from his horse : 5 

Then grew the visage pale, and deadly wet, 
The eyes turn'd in their sockets, drearily; 
And all things show'd the villain's sun was set, 
His trunk that was in chace, fell from its horse, 
And giving the last shudder, was a corse. 

It is thus, and thus only, by making Nature his companion 
wherever he goes, even in the most supernatural region, that the 

5 Hunt quotes the Italian and translates it. 



606 LEIGH HUNT. 

poet, in the words of a very instructive phrase, takes the world 
along with him. It is true, he must not (as the Platonists would 
say) humanize weakly or mistakenly in that region ; otherwise he 
runs the chance of forgetting to be true to the supernatural itself, 
and so betraying a want of imagination from that quarter. His 
nymphs will have no taste of their woods and waters ; his gods 
and goddesses be only so many fair or frowning ladies and gentle- 
men, such as we see in ordinary paintings ; he will be in no 
danger of having his angels likened to a sort of wild- fowl, as 
Rembrandt has made them in his "Jacob's Dream." His Bac- 
chuses will never remind us, like Titian's, of the force and fury, as 
well as of the graces of wine. His Jupiter will reduce no females 
to ashes ; his fairies be nothing fantastical ; his gnomes not " of 
the earth, earthy." And this again will be wanting to Nature ; for 
it will be wanting to the supernatural, as Nature would have made 
it, working in a supernatural direction. Nevertheless, the poet, 
even for imagination's sake, must not become a bigot to imagina- 
tive truth, dragging it down into the region of the mechanical and 
the limited, and losing sight of its paramount privilege, which is 
to make beauty in a human sense, the lady and queen of the uni- 
verse. He would gain nothing by making his ocean-nymphs mere 
fishy creatures, upon the plea that such only could live in the 
water : his wood-nymphs with faces of knotted oak ; his angels 
without breath and song, because no lungs could exist between 
the earth and the empyrean. The Grecian tendency in this 
respect is safer than the Gothic ; nay, more imaginative ; for it 
enables us to imagine beyond imagination, and to bring all things 
healthily round to their only present final ground of sympathy, — 
the human. When we go to heaven, we may idealize in a super- 
human mode, and have altogether different notions of the 
beautiful ; but till then we must be content with the loveliest 
capabilities of earth. The sea-nymphs of Greece were still beau- 
tiful women, though they lived in the water. The gills and fins of 
the ocean's natural inhabitants were confined to their lowest semi- 
human attendants ; or if Triton himself was not quite human, it 






ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETRY ?" 607 

was because he represented the fiercer part of the vitality of the 
seas, as they did the fairer. 6 

******* 
If a young reader should ask, after all, What is the quickest way 
of knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the next 
best, and so on ? the answer is, the only and twofold way : first, 
the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention ; and 
second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which 
made them what they are. Every true reader of poetry partakes 
a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature ; and no one 
can be completely such, who does not love, or take an interest in, 
everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the 
daisy, — from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable of the 
low. It is a good practice to read with pen in hand, marking 
what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, realizes the 
greatest amount of enjoyment, and facilitates reference. It 
enables the reader also, from time to time, to see what progress 
he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up towards the 
stature of its exalter. 

If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the 
highest? I should say, undoubtedly, the Epic; for it includes the 
drama, with narration besides ; or the speaking and action of the 
characters, with the speaking of the poet himself, whose utmost 
address is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, particularly 
in the passages least sustained by enthusiasm. Whether this class 
has included the greatest poet, is another question still under trial ; 
for Shakspeare perplexes all such verdicts, even when the claim- 
ant is Homer ; though, if a judgment may be drawn from his early 
narratives {Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece), it is to 
be doubted whether even Shakspeare could have told a story like 

6 In further illustration of the power of Imagination Hunt quotes from the 
Iliad, XVIII. 203-231, and XXIV. 468-5 16, with translation. Fancy is treated 
much more briefly, and then follow some excellent remarks on Versification, 
but lack of space will not permit a selection. The conclusion of the Essay 
follows. 



608 LEIGH HUNT. 

Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfcetation of 
thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired even 
in his plays ; — if it were possible, once possessing anything of 
his, to wish it away. Next to Homer and Shakspeare come such 
narrators as the less universal, but still intenser Dante; Milton, 
with his dignified imagination; the universal, profoundly simple 
Chaucer; and luxuriant, remote Spenser — immortal child in 
poetry's most poetic solitudes : then the great second-rate dram- 
atists ; unless those who are better acquainted with Greek tragedy 
than I am, demand a place for them before Chaucer : then the 
airy yet robust universality of Ariosto ; the hearty, out-of-door 
nature of Theocritus, also a universalist ; the finest lyrical poets 
(who only take short flights, compared with the narrators) ; the 
purely contemplative poets who have more thought than feeling ; 
the descriptive, satirical, didactic, epigrammatic. It is to be 
borne in mind, however, that the first poet of an inferior class 
may be superior to followers in the train of a higher one, though 
the superiority is by no means to be taken for granted ; otherwise 
Pope would be superior to Fletcher, and Butler to Pope. Imagi- 
nation, teeming with action and character, makes the greatest 
poets; feeling and thought the next; fancy (by itself) the next; 
wit the last. Thought by itself makes no poet at all ; for the mere 
conclusions of the understanding can at best be only so many 
intellectual matters of fact. Feeling, even destitute of conscious 
thought, stands a far better poetical chance ; feeling being a sort 
of thought without the process of thinking, — a grasper of the 
truth without seeing it. And what is very remarkable, feeling 
seldom makes the blunders that thought does. An idle distinction 
has been made between taste and judgment. Taste is the very 
maker of judgment. Put an artificial fruit in your mouth, or only 
handle it, and you will soon perceive the difference between 
judging from taste or tact, and judging from the abstract figment 
called judgment. The latter does but throw you into guesses and 
doubts. Hence the conceits that astonish us in the gravest, and 
even subtlest thinkers, whose taste is not proportionate to their 



ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETRY?" 609 

mental perceptions : men like Donne, for instance ; who, apart 
from accidental personal impressions, seem to look at nothing as 
it really is, but only as to what may be thought of it. Hence, on 
the other hand, the delightfulness of those poets who never vio- 
late truth of feeling, whether in things real or imaginary ; who are 
always consistent with their object and its requirements ; and 
who run the great round of nature, not to perplex and be per- 
plexed, but to make themselves and us happy. And luckily, 
delightfulness is not incompatible with greatness, willing soever as 
men may be in their present imperfect state to set the power 
to subjugate above the power to please. Truth, of any great 
kind whatsoever, makes great writing. This is the reason why 
such poets as Ariosto, though not writing with a constant detail of 
thought and feeling like Dante are justly considered great as well 
as delightful. Their greatness proves itself by the same truth of 
nature, and sustained power, though in a different way. Their 
action is not so crowded and weighty ; their sphere has more ter- 
ritories less fertile ; but it has enchantments of its own, which ex- 
cess of thought would spoil, — luxuries, laughing graces, animal 
spirits ; and not to recognize the beauty and greatness of these, 
treated as they treat them, is simply to be defective in sympathy. 
Every planet is not Mars or Saturn. There is also Venus and 
Mercury. There is one genius of the south, and another of the 
north, and others uniting both. The reader who is too thought- 
less or too sensitive to like intensity of any sort, and he who is too 
thoughtful or too dull to like anything but the greatest possible 
stimulus of reflection or passion, are equally wanting in com- 
plexional fitness for a thorough enjoyment of books. Ariosto oc- 
casionally says as fine things as Dante, and Spenser as Shakspeare ; 
but the business of both is to enjoy ; and in order to partake their 
enjoyment to its full extent, you must feel what poetry is in the gen- 
eral as well as the particular, must be aware that there are different 
songs of the spheres, some fuller of notes, and others of a sustained 
delight ; and as the former keep you perpetually alive to thought 
or passion, so from the latter you receive a constant harmonious 



610 LEIGH HUNT. 

sense of truth and beauty, more agreeable perhaps on the whole, 
though less exciting. Ariosto, for instance, does not tell a story 
with the brevity and concentrated passion of Dante ; every sen- 
tence is not so full of matter, nor the style so removed from the 
indifference of prose ; yet you are charmed with a truth of another 
sort equally characteristic of the writer, equally drawn from nature 
and substituting a healthy sense of enjoyment for intenser emotion. 
Exclusiveness of liking for this or that mode of truth, only shows, 
either that a reader's perceptions are limited, or that he would sac- 
rifice truth itself to his favourite form of it. Sir Walter Raleigh, 
who was as trenchant with his pen as his sword, hailed the Faerie 
Queene of his friend Spenser in verses in which he said that 
Petrarch was thenceforward to be no more heard of; and that in 
all English poetry there was nothing he counted " of any price," 
but the effusions of the new author. Yet Petrarch is still living ; 
Chaucer was not abolished by Sir Walter ; and Shakspeare is 
thought somewhat valuable. A botanist might as well have said, 
that myrtles and oaks were to disappear, because acacias had come 
up. It is with the poet's creations, as with Nature's, great or small. 
Wherever truth and beauty, whatever their amount, can be worthily 
shaped into verse and answer to some demand for it in our hearts, 
there poetry is to be found ; whether in productions grand and 
beautiful as some great event, or some mighty, leafy solitude, or 
no bigger and more pretending than a sweet face or a bunch of 
violets ; whether in Homer's epic or Gray's Elegy, in the enchanted 
gardens of Ariosto and Spenser, or the very pot-herbs of the School- 
mistress of Shenstone, the balms of the simplicity of a cottage. 
Not to know and feel this, is to be deficient in the universality of 
Nature herself, who is a poetess on the smallest as well as the 
largest scale, and who calls upon us to admire all her productions ; 
not indeed with the same degree of admiration, but with no re- 
fusal of it except to defect. 

I cannot draw this essay towards its conclusion better than with 
three memorable words of Milton ; who has said, that poetry, in 
comparison with science, is " simple, sensuous, and passionate.'' 



ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, -WHAT IS POETRY?" 611 

By simple, he means unperplexed and self-evident ; by sensuous, 
genial and full of imagery ; by passionate, excited and enthusiastic. 
I am aware that different constructions have been put on some of 
these words; but the context seems to me to necessitate those 
before us. I quote, however, not from the original, but from an 
extract in the Remarks on Paradise Lost by Richardson. 

What the poet has to cultivate above all things is love and truth ; 
— what he has to avoid, like poison, is the fleeting and the false. 
He will get no good by proposing to be " in earnest at the moment." 
His earnestness must be innate and habitual ; born with him, and 
felt to be his most precious inheritance. " I expect neither profit 
nor general fame by my writings," says Coleridge, in the Preface 
to his Poems, " and I consider myself as having been amply repaid 
without either. Poetry has been to me its ' own exceeding great 
reward;' it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and 
refined my enjoyments ; it has endeared solitude ; and it has given 
me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in 
all that meets and surrounds me." {Pickering's edition, p. 10.) 

" Poetry," says Shelley, " lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of 
the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not famil- 
iar. It reproduces all that it represents ; and the impersonations 
clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of 
those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that 
gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts 
and actions with which it co-exists. The great secret of morals is 
love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of 
ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or 
person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine 
intensely and comprehensively ; he must put himself in the place 
of another, and of many others : the pains and pleasures of his 
species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good 
is imagination ; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon 
the cause." — (Essays and Letters, vol. i. p. 16.) 

I would not willingly say anything after perorations like these ; 
but as treatises on poetry may chance to have auditors who think 



612 LEIGH HUNT. 

themselves called upon to vindicate the superiority of what is 
termed useful knowledge, it may be as well to add, that if the poet 
may be allowed to pique himself on any one thing more than 
another, compared with those who undervalue him, it is on that 
power of undervaluing nobody, and no attainments different from 
his own, which is given him by the very faculty of imagination 
they despise. The greater includes the less. They do not see 
that their inability to comprehend him argues the smaller ca- 
pacity. No man recognizes the worth of utility more than the 
poet : he only desires that the meaning of the term may not come 
short of its greatness, and exclude the noblest necessities of his 
fellow-creatures. He is quite as much pleased, for instance, with 
the facilities for rapid conveyance afforded him by the railroad as 
the dullest confiner of its advantages to that single idea, or as the 
greatest two-idea'd man who varies that single idea with hugging 
himself on his " buttons " or his good dinner. But he sees also the 
beauty of the country through which he passes, of the .towns, of the 
heavens, of the steam-engine itself, thundering and fuming along 
like a magic horse, of the affections that are carrying, perhaps, 
half the passengers on their journey, nay, of those of the great two- 
idea'd man ; and, beyond all this, he discerns the incalculable 
amount of good, and knowledge, and refinement, and mutual con- 
sideration, which this wonderful invention is fitted to circulate 
over the globe, perhaps to the displacement of war itself, and 
certainly to the diffusion of millions of enjoyments. 

" And a button-maker, after all, invented it ! " cries our friend. 

Pardon me — it was a nobleman. A button-maker may be a 
very excellent, and a very poetical man too, and yet not have 
been the first man visited by a sense of the gigantic powers of the 
combination of water and fire. It was a nobleman who first 
thought of this most poetical bit of science. It was a nobleman 
who first thought of it, — a captain who first tried it, — and a 
button-maker who perfected it. And he who put the nobleman 
on such thoughts, was the great philosopher, Bacon, who said 
that poetry had "something divine in it," and was necessary to 
the satisfaction of the human mind- 



XXXI. 

THOMAS DE OUINCEY. 

(1775-1859.) 

BIOGRAPHIES. 
Shakspeare. 1 

[Written in 1838.] 

On a first review of the circumstances, we have reason to feel 
no little perplexity in finding the materials for a Life of this tran- 
scendent writer so meagre and so few, and amongst them the larger 
part of doubtful authority. All the energy of curiosity directed 
upon this subject, through a period of one hundred and fifty years 
(for so long it is since Betterton the actor began to make re- 
searches) has availed us little or nothing. Neither the local tradi- 
tions of his provincial birthplace, though sharing with London 
through half a century the honour of his familiar presence, nor 
the recollections of that brilliant literary circle with whom he lived 
in the metropolis, have yielded much more than such an outline 
of his history as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious 
records of a gravestone. That he lived, and that he died, and 
that he was "a little lower than the angels " — these make up 

1 Contributed in 1838 to the seventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica. Reprinted in Vol. IV. of Professor Masson's new and enlarged edition 
of De Quincey's Collected Writings, which see for valuable notes. Professor 
Masson quotes from De Quincey's letters, " No paper ever cost me so much 
labour: parts of it have been recomposed three times over; " and again, "The 
Shakspeare article cost me more intense labour than any I ever wrote in my 
life." The first two pages of the essay are here omitted. 

613 



614 THOMAS DE QU/NCEY. 

pretty nearly the amount of our undisputed report. It may be 
doubted indeed whether at this day we are as accurately acquainted 
with the life of Shakspeare as with that of Chaucer, though di- 
vided from each other by an interval of two centuries, and (what 
should have been more effectual towards oblivion) by the wars of 
the Two Roses. And yet the traditional memory of a rural and a 
sylvan region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is usually 
exact as well as tenacious ; and, with respect to Shakspeare in 
particular, we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial 
through the generation succeeding to his own, not only from the 
curiosity, and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which 
would pursue the motions of one living so large a part of his life 
at a distance from his wife, but also from the final reverence and 
honour which would settle upon the memory of a poet so pre- 
eminently successful ; of one who, in a space of five-and-twenty 
years, after running a bright career in the capital city of his native 
land, and challenging notice from the throne, had retired with an 
ample fortune created by his personal efforts and by labours purely 
intellectual. 

How are we to account then for that deluge, as if from Lethe, 
which has swept away so entirely the traditional memorials of 
one so illustrious ? Such is the fatality of error which overclouds 
every question connected with Shakspeare, that two of his prin- 
cipal critics, Steevens and Malone, have endeavoured to solve the 
difficulty by cutting it with a falsehood. They deny in effect 
that he was illustrious in the century succeeding to his own, how- 
ever much he has since become so. We shall first produce their 
statements in their own words, and we shall then briefly review 
them. 

Steevens delivers his opinion in the following terms : — "How 
little Shakspeare was once read may be understood from Tate, 
who, in his dedication to the altered play of ' King Lear,' speaks 
of the original as an obscure piece, recommended to his notice by 
a friend ; and the author of the ' Tatler ' having occasion to quote 
a few lines out of ' Macbeth,' was content to receive them from 






BIOGRAPHIES. 615 

Davenant's alteration of that celebrated drama, in which almost 
every original beauty is either awkwardly disguised or arbitrarily 
omitted." Another critic, who cites this passage from Steevens, 
pursues the hypothesis as follows : — " In fifty years after his death 
Dryden mentions that he was then become a little obsolete. In 
the beginning of the last century Lord Shaftesbury complains of 
his rude unpolished style and his antiquated phrase and wit. It 
is certain that for nearly a hundred years after his death, partly 
owing to the immediate revolution and rebellion, and partly to the 
licentious taste encouraged in Charles II. 's time, and perhaps 
partly to the incorrect state of his works, he was ALMOST 
ENTIRELY NEGLECTED." The critic then goes on to quote 
with approbation the opinion of Malone — that " if he had been 
read, admired, studied, and imitated in the same degree as he is 
now, the enthusiasm of some one or other of his admirers in the 
last age would have induced him to make some inquiries concern- 
ing the history of his theatrical career, and the anecdotes of his 
private life." After which this enlightened writer re-affirms and 
clenches the judgment he has quoted by saying : " His admirers, 
however, if he had admirers in that age, possessed no portion of 
such enthusiasm." 

It may perhaps be an instructive lesson to young readers if we 
now show them, by a short sifting of these confident dogmatists, 
how easy it is for a careless or a half- read man to circulate the 
most absolute falsehoods under the semblance of truth ; falsehoods 
which impose upon himself as much as they do upon others. We 
believe that not one word or illustration is uttered in the sentence 
cited from these three critics which is not virtually in the very 
teeth of the truth. 

To begin with Mr. Nahum Tate. This poor grub of literature, 
if he did really speak of " Lear" as "an obscure piece, recom- 
mended to his notice by a friend," of which we must be allowed 
to doubt, was then uttering a conscious falsehood. It happens 
that " Lear " was one of the few Shaksperian dramas which had 
kept the stage unaltered. But it is easy to see a mercenary motive 



616 THOMAS DK QUINCEY. 

in such an artifice as this. Mr. Nahum Tate is not of a class of 
whom it can be safe to say that they are " well known ; " they and 
their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason he 
has to exult in the felicity of such obscurity, for else this same 
vilest of travesties, Mr. Nahum's " Lear," would consecrate his 
name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age 
of Dryden rather than of Pope ; he " flourished," if we can use 
such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the era of 
the Revolution ; and his " Lear," we believe, was arranged in the 
year 1682. But the family to which he belongs is abundantly 
recorded in the "Dunciad"; and his own name will be found 
amongst its catalogues of heroes. 

With respect to the author of the " Tatler" a very different 
explanation is requisite. Steevens means the reader to understand 
Addison ; but it does not follow that the particular paper in ques- 
tion was from his pen. Nothing, however, could be more natural 
than to quote from the common form of the play as then in 
possession of the stage. It was there, beyond a doubt, that a fine 
gentleman living upon town, and not professing any deep scholastic 
knowledge of literature (a light in which we are always to regard 
the writers of the " Spectator," " Guardian," &c), would be likely 
to have learned anything he quoted from "Macbeth." This we 
say generally of the writers in those periodical papers ; but with 
reference to Addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular 
notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer 
lines of distinction. It is already pretty well known that Addison 
had no very intimate acquaintance with the literature of his own 
country. It is known also that he did not think such an acquaint- 
ance any ways essential to the character of an elegant scholar and 
litterateur. Quite enough he found it, and more than enough 
for the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable 
familiarity with the foremost Latin poets, and a very slender 
one indeed with the Grecian. How slender we can see in his 
"Travels." Of modern authors none as yet had been published 
with notes, commentaries, or critical collations of the text ; and 



BIOGRAPHIES. 617 

accordingly Addison looked upon all of them, except those few 
who professed themselves followers in the retinue and equipage 
of the ancients, as creatures of a lower race. Boileau, as a mere 
imitator and propagator of Horace, he read, and probably little 
else, amongst the French Classics. Hence it arose that he took 
upon himself to speak sneeringly of Tasso. To this, which was 
a bold act for his timid mind, he was emboldened by the counte- 
nance of Boileau. Of the elder Italian authors, such as Ariosto, 
and a fortiori Dante, he knew absolutely nothing. Passing to our 
own literature, it is certain that Addison was profoundly ignorant 
of Chaucer and of Spenser. Milton only — and why? simply 
because he was a brilliant scholar, and stands like a bridge be- 
tween the Christian literature and the Pagan — Addison had read 
and esteemed. There was also in the very constitution of Milton's 
mind, in the majestic regularity and planetary solemnity of its epic 
movements, something which he could understand and appreciate : 
as to the meteoric and incalculable eccentricities of the dramatic 
mind, as it displayed itself in the heroic age of -our drama, 
amongst the Titans of 1590-1630, they confounded and over- 
whelmed him. 

In particular, with regard to Shakspeare, we shall now proclaim 
a discovery which we made some twenty years ago. We, like 
others, from seeing frequent references to Shakspeare in the 
" Spectator," had acquiesced in the common belief that, although 
Addison was no doubt profoundly unlearned in Shakspeare's 
language, and thoroughly unable to do him justice (and this we 
might well assume, since his great rival Pope, who had expressly 
studied Shakspeare, was, after all, so memorably deficient in the 
appropriate knowledge), yet that of course he had a vague popular 
knowledge of the mighty poet's cardinal dramas. Accident only 
led us into a discovery of our mistake. Twice or thrice we had 
observed that, if Shakspeare were quoted, that paper turned out 
not to be Addison's ; and at length, by express examination, we 
ascertained the curious fact that Addison has never in one instance 
quoted or made any reference to Shakspeare. But was this, as 



618 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

Steevens most disingenuously pretends, to be taken as an exponent 
of the public feeling towards Shakspeare ? Was Addison's neglect 
representative of a general neglect? If so, whence came Rowe's 
edition, Pope's, Theobald's, Sir Thomas Hanmer's, Bishop War- 
burton's, all upon the heels of one another? With such facts 
staring him in the face, how shameless must be that critic who 
could, in support of such a thesis, refer to " the author of the 
' Tatter,'' " contemporary with all these editors. The truth is, 
Addison was well aware of Shakspeare 's hold on the popular 
mind ; too well aware of it. The feeble constitution of the poetic 
faculty as existing in himself, forbade his sympathising with Shak- 
speare ; the proportions were too colossal for his delicate vision ; 
and yet, as one who sought popularity himself, he durst not shock 
what perhaps he viewed as a national prejudice. Those who have 
happened, like ourselves, to see the effect of passionate music and 
" deep-inwoven harmonics " upon the feeling of an idiot, may 
conceive what we mean. Such music does not utterly revolt the 
idiot; on the contrary, it has a strange but horrid fascination for 
him : it alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly unhappy ; 
and chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses of thoughts and slum- 
bering instincts, which it is for his peace to have entirely obscured, 
because for him they can be revealed only partially, and with the 
sad effect of throwing a baleful gleam upon his blighted condition. 
])o we mean, then, to compare Addison with an idiot? Not gen- 
erally, by any means. Nobody can more sincerely admire him 
where he was a man of real genius — viz., in his delineations of 
character and manners, or in the exquisite delicacies of his 
humour. But assuredly Addison as a poet was amongst the sons 
of the feeble, and between the authors of " Cato " and " King 
Lear " there was a gulf never to be bridged over. 

But Dryden, we are told, pronounced Shakspeare already in his 
day " a* little obsolete." Here, now, we have wilful, deliberate 
falsehood. Obsolete, in Dryden's meaning, does not imply that 
he was so with regard to his popularity (the question then at 
issue), but with regard to his diction and choice of words. To 



BIOGRAPHIES, (A9 

cite Dryden as a witness for any purpose against Shakspeare — 
Dryden, who of all men had the most ransacked wit and exhausted 
language in celebrating the supremacy of Shakspeare's genius — 
does indeed require as much shamelessness in feeling as mendacity 
in principle. 2 

But then Lord Shaftesbury, who may be taken as half-way 
between Dryden and Pope (Dryden died in 1700, Pope was then 
twelve years old, and Lord S. wrote chiefly, we believe, between 
1700 and 1710), "complains," it seems, " of his rude unpolished 
style, and his antiquated phrase and wit." What if he does ? Let 
the whole truth be told, and then we shall see how much stress is to 
be laid upon such a judgment. The second Lord Shaftesbury the 
author of the " Characteristics," was the grandson of that famous 
political agitator, the Chancellor Shaftesbury, who passed his whole 
hfe in storms of his own creation. The second Lord Shaftesbury 
was a man of crazy constitution, querulous from ill-health, and had 
received an eccentric education from his eccentric grandfather 
He was practised daily in talking Latin, to which afterwards he 
added a competent study of the Greek; and finallv he became 
unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute and undis- 
tinguishmg pedant that perhaps literature has to show. He sneers 
continually at the regular-built academic pedant ; but he himself, 
though no academic, was essentially the very impersonation of 
pedantry. No thought however beautiful, no image however 
magnificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed 
in English ; but present him with the most trivial commonplaces 
in Greek, and he unaffectedly fancied them divine ; mistaking the 
pleasurable sense of his own power in a difficult and rare accom- 
plishment for some peculiar force or beauty in the passage Such 
was the outline of his literary taste. And was it upon Shakspeare 
only, or upon him chiefly, that he lavished his pedantry? Far 
from it. He attacked Milton with no less fervour; he attacked 
Dryden with a thousand times more. Jeremy Taylor he quoted 
only to ridicule ; and even Locke, the confidential friend of his 
- See ante, pp. 243-4, for I hyden's opinion of Shakspeare. 



620 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. As to Shak- 
speare, so far from Lord Shaftesbury's censures arguing his de- 
ficient reputation, the very fact of his noticing him at all proves 
his enormous popularity ; for upon system he noticed those only 
who ruled the public taste. The insipidity of his objections to 
Shakspeare may be judged from this, that he comments in a spirit 
of absolute puerility upon the name Desde??wna, as though inten- 
tionally formed from the Greek word for superstition. In fact, he 
had evidently read little beyond the list of names in Shakspeare ; 
yet there is proof enough that the irresistible beauty of what little 
he had read was too much for all his pedantry, and startled him 
exceedingly ; for ever afterwards he speaks of Shakspeare as one 
who, with a little aid from Grecian sources, really had something 
great and promising about him. As to modern authors, neither 
this Lord Shaftesbury nor Addison read anything for the latter 
years of their life but Bayle's Dictionary. And most of the little 
scintillations of erudition which may be found in the notes to 
the " Characteristics," and in the Essays of Addison, are derived, 
almost without exception, and uniformly without acknowledgment, 
from Bayle. 

Finally, with regard to the sweeping assertion, that " for nearly 
a hundred years after his death Shakspeare was almost entirely 
neglected," we shall meet this scandalous falsehood by a rapid 
view of his fortunes during the century in question. The tradition 
has always been, that Shakspeare was honoured by the special 
notice of Queen Elizabeth, as well as by that of James I. At 
one time we were disposed to question the truth of this tradition ; 
but that was for want of having read attentively the lines of Ben 
Jonson to the memory of Shakspeare, those generous lines which 
have so absurdly been taxed with faint praise. Jonson could make 
no mistake on this point : he, as one of Shakspeare's familiar 
companions, must have witnessed at the very time, and accom- 
panied with friendly sympathy, every motion of royal favour 
towards Shakspeare. Now he, in words which leave no room for 
doubt, exclaims — 



BIOGRAPHIES. 621 

Sweet swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 

To see thee in our waters yet appear, 

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames 

That so did take Eliza and our James. 3 

These princes, then, were taken, were fascinated, with some of 
Shakspeare's dramas. In Elizabeth the approbation would proba- 
bly be sincere. In James we can readily suppose it to have been 
assumed, for he was a pedant in a different sense from Lord 
Shaftesbury; not from undervaluing modern poetry, but from 
caring little or nothing for any poetry, although he wrote about 
its mechanic rules. Still, the royal imprimatur would be influential 
and serviceable no less when offered hypocritically than in full 
sincerity. Next let us consider, at the very moment of Shak- 
speare's death, who were the leaders of the British youth, the 
principes juvcntutis, in the two fields, equally important to a great 
poet's fame, of rank and of genius? The Prince of Wales and 
John Milton ; the first being then about sixteen years old, the 
other about eight. Now these two great powers, as we may call 
them, these presiding stars over all that was English in thought 
and action, were both impassioned admirers of Shakspeare. Each 
of them counts for many thousands. The Prince of Wales had 
learned to appreciate Shakspeare, not originally from reading 
him, but from witnessing the court representations of his plays at 
Whitehall. Afterwards we know that he made Shakspeare his 
closet companion, for he was reproached with doing so by 
Milton. And we know also, from the just criticism pronounced 
upon the character and diction of Caliban by one of Charles's 
confidential counsellors, Lord Falkland, that the king's admiration 
of Shakspeare had impressed a determination upon the Court 
reading. As to Milton, by double prejudices, puritanical and clas- 
sical, his mind had been preoccupied against the full impressions 
of Shakspeare. And we know that there is such a thing as keep- 

3 From Ben Jonson's lines " To the memory of my beloved Master William 
Shakspeare, and what he hath left us," prefixed to the First Folio edition of 
Shakspeare, 1623. 



622 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

mg the sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or 
state of abeyance ; an effort of self-conquest realised in more 
cases than one by the ancient fathers, both Greek and Latin, with 
regard to the profane classics. Intellectually they admired, and 
would not belie their admiration ; but they did not give their 
hearts cordially, they did not abandon themselves to their natural 
impulses. They averted their eyes and weaned their attention 
from the dazzling object. Such, probably, was Milton's state of 
feeling towards Shakspeare after 1642, when the theatres were 
suppressed, and the fanatical fervour in its noontide heat. Yet 
even then he did not belie his reverence intellectually for Shak- 
speare ; and in his younger days we know that he had spoken 
more enthusiastically of Shakspeare than he ever did again of 
any uninspired author. Not only did he address a sonnet to 
his memory, in which he declares that kings would wish to die, 
if by dying they could obtain such a monument in the hearts of 
men ; but he also speaks of him in his // Penseroso as the 
tutelary genius of the English stage. In this transmission of the 
torch (XafX7raSocf>opLa) Dryden succeeds to Milton : he was born 
nearly thirty years later; about thirty years they were contem- 
poraries, and by thirty years, or nearly, Dryden survived his 
great leader. Dryden, in fact, lived out the seventeenth century. 
And we have now arrived within nine years of the era when the 
critical editions started in hot succession to one another. The 
names we have mentioned were the great influential names of 
the century. But of inferior homage there was no end. How 
came Betterton the actor, how came Davenant, how came Rowe, 
or Pope, by their intense (if not always sound) admiration for 
Shakspeare, unless they had found it fuming upwards like incense 
to the Pagan deities in ancient times from altars erected at every 
turning upon all the paths of men ? 

But it is objected that inferior dramatists were sometimes pre- 
ferred to Shakspeare ; and again, that vile travesties of Shak- 
speare were preferred to the authentic dramas. As to the first 
argument, let it be remembered that if the saints of the chapel 



BIOGRAPHIES. 623 

are always in the same honour because their men are simply dis- 
charging a duty which, once due, will be due for ever, the saints 
of the theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the local genius, 
and to the very reasons for having a theatre at all. Men go 
thither for amusement ; this is the paramount purpose, and even 
acknowledged merit or absolute superiority must give way to it. 
Does a man at Paris expect to see Moliere reproduced in pro- 
portion to his admitted precedency in the French drama? On 
the contrary, that very precedency argues such a familiarisation 
with his works, that those who are in quest of relaxation will 
reasonably prefer any recent drama to that which, having lost 
all its novelty, has lost much of its excitement. We speak of 
ordinary minds ; but in cases of public entertainments, deriving 
part of their power from scenery and stage pomp, novelty is for 
all minds an essential condition of attraction. Moreover, in 
some departments of the comic, Beaumont and Fletcher, when 
writing in combination, really had a freedom and breadth of 
manner which excels the comedy of Shakspeare. As to the 
altered Shakspeare as taking precedency of the genuine Shak- 
speare no argument can be so frivolous. The public were never 
allowed a choice ; the great majority of an audience even now 
cannot be expected to carry the real Shakspeare in their mind, so 
as to pursue a comparison between that and the alteration. Their 
comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they have oppor- 
tunities of seeing ; that is, between the various pieces presented 
to them by the managers of theatres. Further than this it is 
impossible for them to extend their office of judging and collat- 
ing ; and the degenerate taste which substituted the caprices of 
Davenant, the rants of Dryden, or the filth of Tate, for the jewel- 
lery of Shakspeare, cannot with any justice be charged upon the 
public, not one in a thousand of whom was furnished with any 
means of comparing, but exclusively upon those (viz., theatrical 
managers) who had the very amplest. Yet even in excuse for 
them much may be said. The very length of some plays com- 
pelled them to make alterations. The best of Shakspeare's 



624 THOMAS BE QUINCE V. 

dramas, "King Lear," is the least fitted for representation; and, 
even for the vilest alteration, it ought in candour to be considered 
that possession is nine points of the law. He who would not have 
introduced was often obliged to retain. 

Finally, it is urged that the small number of editions through 
which Shakspeare passed in the seventeenth century, furnishes a 
separate argument, and a conclusive one, against his popularity. 
We answer, that considering the bulk of his plays collectively, the 
editions were not few ; compared with any known case, the copies 
sold of Shakspeare were quite as many as could be expected under 
the circumstances. Ten or fifteen times as much consideration 
went to the purchase of one great folio like Shakspeare, as would 
attend the purchase of a little volume like Waller or Donne. 
Without reviews, or newspapers, or advertisements to diffuse the 
knowledge of books, the progress of literature was necessarily 
slow, and its expansion narrow. But this is a topic which has 
always been treated unfairly, not with regard to Shakspeare only, 
but to Milton, as well as many others. The truth is, we have not 
facts enough to guide us ; for the number of editions often tells 
nothing accurately as to the number of copies. With respect to 
Shakspeare it is certain that, had his masterpieces been gathered 
into small volumes, Shakspeare would have had a most extensive 
sale. As it was, there can be no doubt that, from his own genera- 
tion, throughout the seventeenth century, and until the eighteenth 
began to accommodate, not any greater popularity in him, but a 
greater taste for reading in the public, his fame never ceased 
to be viewed as a national trophy of honour ; and the most 
illustrious men of the seventeenth century were no whit less fer- 
vent in their admiration than those of the eighteenth and the 
nineteenth, either as respected its strength and sincerity, or as 
respected its open profession. 

It is therefore a false notion, that the general sympathy with 
the merits of Shakspeare ever beat with a languid or intermitting 
pulse. Undoubtedly, in times when the functions of critical 
journals and of newspapers were not at hand to diffuse or to 



BIOGRAPHIES. 625 

strengthen the impressions which emanated from the capital, all 
opinions must have travelled slowly into the provinces. But even 
then, whilst the perfect organs of communication were wanting, 
indirect substitutes were supplied by the necessities of the times, 
or by the instincts of political zeal. Two channels especially lay 
open between the great central organ of the national mind and 
the remotest provinces. Parliaments were occasionally summoned 
(for the judges' circuits were too brief to produce much effect), 
and during their longest suspensions the nobility, with large reti- 
nues, continually resorted to the Court. But an intercourse more 
constant and more comprehensive was maintained through the 
agency of the two universities. Already, in the time of James I., 
the growing importance of the gentry, and the consequent birth 
of a new interest in political questions, had begun to express itself 
at Oxford, and still more so at Cambridge. Academic persons 
stationed themselves as sentinels at London, for the purpose of 
watching the Court and the course of public affairs. These per- 
sons wrote letters, like those of the celebrated Joseph Mede, 
which we find in Ellis's Historical Collections, reporting to their 
fellow-collegians all the novelties of public life as they arose, or 
personally carried down such reports, and thus conducted the 
general feelings at the centre into lesser centres, from which again 
they were diffused into the ten thousand parishes of England ; for 
(with a very few exceptions in favour of poor benefices, Welsh 
or Cumbrian) every parish priest must unavoidably have spent 
his three years at one or other of the English universities. And 
by this mode of diffusion it is that we can explain the strength 
with which Shakspeare's thoughts and diction impressed them- 
selves from a very early period upon the national literature, and 
even more generally upon the national thinking and conversation. 4 



4 See De Quincey's note in Masson's edition, concluding as follows : " The 
reinforcement of the general language by aids from the writings of Shakspeare 
had already commenced in the seventeenth century." Pp. 33~ 6 9 are liere 
omitted. 



626 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

After this review of Shakspeare's life it becomes our duty to 
take a summary survey of his works, ,of his intellectual powers, 
and of his station in literature — a station which is now irre- 
vocably settled, not so much (which happens in other cases) by a 
vast over- balance of favourable suffrages, or by acclamation ; not 
so much by the voices of those who admire him up to the verge 
of idolatry, as by the acts of those who everywhere seek for his 
works among the primal necessities of life, demand them, and 
crave them as they do their daily bread ; not so much by eulogy 
openly proclaiming itself, as by the silent homage recorded in the 
endless multiplication of what he has bequeathed us ; not so 
much by his own compatriots, who, with regard to almost every 
other author, 5 compose the total amount of his effective audience, 
as by the unanimous "All hail!" of intellectual Christendom; 
finally, not by the hasty partisanship of his own generation, nor 
by the biassed judgment of an age trained in the same modes of 
feeling and of thinking with himself, but by the solemn award of 
generation succeeding to generation, of one age correcting the 
obliquities or peculiarities of another ; by the verdict of two 
hundred and thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very 
latest of his creations, or of two hundred and forty-seven years 
if we date from the earliest : a verdict which has been continually 
revived and re-opened, probed, searched, vexed, by criticism in 
every spirit, from the most genial and intelligent down to the 
most malignant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads and 
great ignorance could suggest, when co-operating with impure 
hearts and narrow sensibilities ; a verdict, in short, sustained and 
countersigned by a longer series of writers, many of them emi- 

5 " An exception ought perhaps to be made for Sir Walter Scott and 
Cervantes; but with regard to all other writers ... it still remains true (and 
the very sale of the books is proof sufficient) that an alien author never does 
take root in the general sympathies out of his own country. He takes his 
station in libraries, he is read by the man of learned leisure, he is known and 
valued by the refined and the elegant, but he is not (what Shakspeare is 
for Germany and America) in any proper sense a popular favourite." — From 
De Quincey's note. 



BIOGRAPHIES. 627 

nent for wit or learning, than were ever before congregated upon 
any inquest relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient 
or modern, Pagan or Christian. It was a most witty saying with 
respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, who made a trade of 
insulting the memories of deceased authors by forged writings, 
that he was "among the new terrors of death." But in the 
gravest sense it may be affirmed of Shakspeare that he is among 
the modern luxuries of life ; that life, in fact, is a new thing, 
and one more to be coveted, since Shakspeare has extended the 
domains of human consciousness, and pushed its dark frontiers 
into regions not so much as dimly descried or even suspected 
before his time, far less illuminated (as now they are) by beauty 
and tropical luxuriance of life. For instance — a single instance, 
indeed one which in itself is a world of new revelation — the 
possible beauty of the female character had not been seen as in 
a dream before Shakspeare called into perfect life the radiant 
shapes of Desdemona, of Imogen, of Hermione, of Perdita, of 
Ophelia, of Miranda, and many others. The Una of Spenser, 
earlier by ten or fifteen years than most of these, was an ideal- 
ised portrait of female innocence and virgin purity, but too 
shadowy and unreal for a dramatic reality. And as to the Gre- 
cian classics, let not the reader imagine for an instant that any 
prototype in this field of Shakspearian power can be looked for 
there. The Antigone and the Electro, of the tragic poets are the 
two leading female characters that classical antiquity offers to our 
respect, but assuredly not to our impassioned love, as disciplined 
and exalted in the school of Shakspeare. They challenge our 
admiration, severe, and even stern, as impersonations of filial 
duty, cleaving to the steps of a desolate and afflicted old man ; 
or of sisterly affection, maintaining the rights of a brother under 
circumstances of peril, of desertion, and consequently of perfect 
self-reliance. Iphigenia, again, though not dramatically coming 
before us in her own person, but according to the beautiful report 
of a spectator, presents us with a fine statuesque model of heroic 
fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even in the very agonies 



628 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

of her cruel immolation, refused to forget, by a single indecorous 
gesture, or so much as a moment's neglect of her own princely 
descent, that she herself was " a lady in the land." These are 
line marble groups, but they are not the warm breathing realities 
of Shakspeare ; there is " no speculation " in their cold marble 
eyes ; the breath of life is not in their nostrils ; the fine pulses 
of womanly sensibilities are not throbbing in their bosoms. And 
besides this immeasurable difference between the cold moony 
reflexes of life, as exhibited by the power of Grecian art, and the 
true sunny life of Shakspeare, it must be observed that the An- 
tigones, &c, of the antique put forward but one single trait of 
character, like the aloe with its single blossom : this solitary 
feature is presented to us as an abstraction, and as an insulated 
quality; whereas in Shakspeare all is presented in the concrete; 
that is to say, not brought forward in relief, as by some effort of 
an anatomical artist, but embodied and imbedded, so to speak, 
as by the force of a creative nature, in the complex system of a 
human life ; a life in which all the elements move and play 
simultaneously, and with something more than 'mere simultaneity 
or co-existence, acting and re-acting each upon the other — nay, 
even acting by each other and through each other. In Shak- 
speare's characters is felt for ever a real orga?iic life, where each 
is for the whole and in the whole, and where the whole is for each 
and in each. They only are real incarnations. 

The Greek poets could not exhibit any approximation \.o female 
character without violating the truth of Grecian life, and shocking 
the feelings of the audience. The drama with the Greeks, as with 
us, though much less than with us, was a picture of human life ; 
and that which could not occur in life could not wisely be exhibited 
on the stage. Now, in ancient Greece, women were secluded from 
the society of men. The conventual sequestration of the ywaiKw- 
v6Tis, or female apartment of the house, and the Mahommedan 
consecration of its threshold against the ingress of males, had been 
transplanted from Asia into Greece thousands of years perhaps 
before either convents or Mahommed existed. Thus barred from 



BIOGRAPHIES. 629 

all open social intercourse, women could not develop or express 
any character by word or action. Even to have a character, vio- 
lated, to a Grecian mind, the ideal portrait of feminine excellence ; 
whence, perhaps, partly the too generic, too little individualised, 
style of Grecian beauty. But prominently to express a character 
was impossible under the common tenor of Grecian life, unless 
when high tragical catastrophes transcended the decorums of that 
tenor, or for a brief interval raised the curtain which veiled it. 
Hence the subordinate part which women play upon the Greek 
stage in all but some half-dozen cases. In the paramount tragedy 
on that stage, the model tragedy, the CEdipus Tyrannus of Soph- 
ocles, there is virtually no woman at all ; for Jocasta is a party to 
the story merely as the dead Laius or the self-murdered Sphinx 
was a party — viz., by her contributions to the fatalities of the 
event, not by anything she does or says spontaneously. In fact, 
the Greek poet, if a wise poet, could not address himself genially 
to a task in which he must begin by shocking the sensibilities of 
his countrymen. And hence followed, not only the dearth of 
female characters in the Grecian drama, but also a second result 
still more favourable to the sense of a new power evolved by Shak- 
speare. Whenever the common law of Grecian life did give way, 
it was, as we have observed, to the suspending force of some great 
convulsion or tragical catastrophe. This for a moment (like an 
earthquake in a nunnery) would set at liberty even the timid, flut- 
tering Grecian women, those doves of the dove-cot, and would call 
some of them into action. But which? Precisely those of ener- 
getic and masculine minds ; the timid and feminine would but 
shrink the more from public gaze and from tumult. Thus it hap- 
pened that such female characters as were exhibited in Greece 
could not but be the harsh and the severe. If a gentle Ismene 
appeared for a moment in contest with some energetic sister Anti- 
gone (and chiefly, perhaps by way of drawing out the fiercer char- 
acter of that sister) , she was soon dismissed as unfit for scenical 
effect. So that not only were female characters few, but, moreover, 
of these few the majority were but repetitions of masculine qualities 



630 THOMAS DE QUINCE V. 

in female persons. Female agency being seldom summoned on 
the stage except when it had received a sort of special dispensation 
from its sexual character, by some terrific convulsions of the house 
or the city, naturally it assumed the style of action suited to these 
circumstances. And hence it arose that not woman as she differed 
from man, but woman as she resembled man — woman, in short, 
seen under circumstances so dreadful as to abolish the effect of 
sexual distinction, was the woman of the Greek tragedy. And 
hence generally arose for Shakspeare the wider field, and the more 
astonishing by its perfect novelty, when he first introduced female 
characters, not as mere varieties or echoes of masculine characters, 
a Medea or Clytemnestra, or a vindictive Hecuba, the mere tigress 
of the tragic tiger, but female characters that had the appropriate 
beauty of female nature ; woman no longer grand, terrific, and re- 
pulsive, but woman " after her kind" — the other hemisphere of 
the dramatic world \ woman running through the vast gamut of 
womanly loveliness ; woman as emancipated, exalted, ennobled, 
under a new law of Christian morality ; woman the sister and co- 
equal of man, no longer his slave, his prisoner, and sometimes his 
rebel. " It is a far cry to Loch Awe " ; and from the Athenian 
stage to the stage of Shakspeare, it may be said, is a prodigious 
interval. True ; but prodigious as it is, there is really nothing 
between them. The Roman stage, at least the tragic stage, as is 
well known, was put out, as by an extinguisher, by the cruel amphi- 
theatre, just as a candle is made pale and ridiculous by daylight. 
Those who were fresh from the real murders of the bloody amphi- 
theatre regarded with contempt the mimic murders of the stage. 
Stimulation too coarse and too intense had its usual effect in mak- 
ing the sensibilities callous. Christian emperors arose at length, 
who abolished the amphitheatre in its bloodier features. But by 
that time the genius of the tragic muse had long slept the sleep of 
death ; and that muse had no resurrection until the age of Shak- 
speare. So that, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen centuries and 
upwards separates Shakspeare from Euripides, the last of the sur- 
viving Greek tragedians, the one is still the nearest successor of 



BIOGRAPHIES. 631 

the other, just as Connaught and the islands in Clew Bay are next 
neighbours to America, although three thousand watery columns, 
each of a cubic mile in dimensions, divide them from each other. 
A second reason which lends an emphasis of novelty and effec- 
tive power to Shakspeare's female world, is' a peculiar fact of 
contrast which exists between that and his corresponding world 
of men. Let us explain. The purpose and the intention of the 
Grecian stage was not primarily to develop human character, 
whether in men or in women ; human fates were its object, great 
tragic situations under the mighty control of a vast cloudy destiny, 
dimly descried at intervals, and brooding over human life by mys- 
terious agencies and for mysterious ends. Man, no longer the 
representative of an august wiU — man, the passion-puppet of 
fate, could not with any effect display what we call a character 
which is a distinction between man and man, emanating originally 
from the will, and expressing its determinations, moving under the 
large variety of human impulses. The will is the central pivot of 
character, and this was obliterated, thwarted, cancelled by the 
dark fatalism which brooded over the Grecian stage. That ex- 
planation will sufficiently clear up the reason why marked or 
complex variety of character was slighted by the great principles 
of the Greek tragedy. And every scholar who has studied that 
grand drama of Greece with feeling — that drama so magnificent, 
so regal, so stately — and who has thoughtfully investigated its 
principles and its difference from the English drama, will acknowl- 
edge that powerful and elaborate character — character, for in- 
stance, that could employ the fiftieth part of that profound analysis 
which has been applied to Hamlet, to Falstaff, to Lear, to Othello, 
and applied by Mrs. Jamieson so admirably to the full develop- 
ment of the Shakspearian heroines — would have been as much 
wasted, nay, would have been defeated, and interrupted the blind 
agencies of fate, just in the same way as it would injure the shad- 
owy grandeur of a ghost to individualise it too much. Milton's 
angels are slightly touched, superficially touched, with differences 
of character, but they are such differences, so simple and general, 



632 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

as are just sufficient to rescue them from the reproach applied to 
Virgil's "fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthem";* just sufficient 
to make them knowable apart. Pliny speaks of painters who 
painted in one or two colours ; and, as respects the angelic char- 
acters, Milton does so' — he is monochromatic. So, and for reasons 
resting upon the same ultimate philosophy, were the mighty 
architects of the Greek tragedy. They also were monochro- 
matic ; they also, as to the characters of their persons, painted in 
one colour. And so far there might have been the same novelty 
in Shakspeare's men as in his women. There might have been, 
but the reason why there is not must be sought in the fact that 
History, the muse of History, had there even been no such muse 
as Melpomene, would have forced us into an acquaintance with 
human character. History, as the representative of actual life, of 
real man, gives us powerful delineations of character in its chief 
agents — that is, in men; and therefore it is that Shakspeare, the 
absolute creator of female character, was but the mightiest of all 
painters with regard to male character. Take a single instance. 
The Antony of Shakspeare, immortal for its execution, is found, 
after all, as regards the primary conception, in history. Shak- 
speare's delineation is but the expansion of the germ already 
pre-existing, by way of scattered fragments, in Cicero's Philippics, 
in Cicero's Letters, in Appian, &c. But Cleopatra, equally fine, 
is a pure creation of art. The situation and the scenic circum- 
stances belong to history, but the character belongs to Shakspeare. 
In the great world therefore of woman, as the interpreter of the 
shifting phases and the lunar varieties of that mighty changeable 
planet, that lovely satellite of man, Shakspeare stands not the first 
only, not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of 
truth. Woman, therefore, the beauty of the female mind, this is 
one great field of his power. The supernatural world, the world 
of apparitions, that is another ; for reasons which it would be easy 
to give, reasons emanating from the gross mythology of the 
ancients, no Grecian, no Roman, could have conceived a ghost. 

6 Virgil, sEneid, I. 222. Read Cloanthum for De Quincey's Cloanthem. 



BIOGRAPHIES. 633 

That shadowy conception, the protesting apparition, the awful 
projection of the human conscience, belongs to the Christian 
mind ; and in all Chr itendom, who, let us ask, who, but Shak- 
speare, has found the power for effectually working this mysterious 
mode of being? In summoning back to earth " the majesty of 
buried Denmark," how like an awful necromancer does Shak- 
speare appear ! All the pomps and grandeurs which religion, 
which the grave, which the popular superstition had gathered 
about the subject of apparitions, are here converted to his pur- 
pose, and bend to one awful effect. The wormy grave brought 
into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn ; the trumpet 
of resurrection suggested, and again as an antagonist idea to the 
crowing of the cock (a bird ennobled in the Christian my thus by 
the part he is made to play at the Crucifixion) ; its starting " as 
a guilty thing" placed in opposition to its majestic expression 
of offended dignity when struck at by the partisans of the senti- 
nels ; its awful allusions to the secrets of its prison-house ; its 
ubiquity, contrasted with its local presence ; its aerial substance, 
yet clothed in palpable armour ; the heart-shaking solemnity of 
its language, and the appropriate scenery of its haunt — viz., the 
ramparts of a capital fortress, with no witnesses but a few gentle- 
men mounting 7 guard at the dead of night : what a mist, what a 
mirage of vapour, is here accumulated, through which the dread- 
ful being in the centre looms upon us in far larger proportions 
than could have happened had it been insulated and left naked of 
this circumstantial pomp! In the "Tempest," again, what new 
modes of life, preternatural, yet far as the poles from the spiritual- 
ities of religion ! Ariel in antithesis to Caliban ! 7 What is most 
ethereal to what is most animal ! A phantom of air, an abstrac- 
tion of the dawn and of vesper sunlights, a bodiless sylph on the 
one hand ; on the other a gross carnal monster, like the Miltonic 
Asmodai, " the fleshliest incubus " among the fiends, and yet so 

7 " Caliban has not yet been thoroughly fathomed. For all Shakspeare's 
great creations are, like works of nature, subjects of unexhaustible study." -*• 
Di: Quincey's note. 



634 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 

far ennobled into interest by his intellectual power, and by the 
grandeur of misanthropy ! In the " Midsummer Night's Dream," 
again, we have the old traditional fairy, a lovely mode of preter- 
natural life, remodified by Shakspeare's eternal talisman. Oberon 
and Titania remind us at first glance of Ariel ; they approach, but 
how far they recede ; they are like — " like, but oh, how differ- 
ent ! " And in no other exhibition of this dreamy population of 
the moonlight forests and forest-lawns are the circumstantial pro- 
prieties of fairy life so exquisitely imagined, sustained, or ex- 
pressed. The dialogue between Oberon and Titania is, of itself 
and taken separately from its connection, one of the most delight- 
ful poetic scenes that literature affords. The witches in " Mac- 
beth " are another variety of supernatural life, in which Shak- 
speare's power to enchant and disenchant are alike portentous. 
The circumstances of the blasted heath, the army at a distance, 
the withered attire of the mysterious hags, and the choral litanies 
of their fiendish Sabbath, are as finely imagined in their kind as 
those which herald and which surround the ghost in " Hamlet." 
There we see the positive of Shakspeare's superior power. But 
now turn and look to the negative. At a time when the trials of 
witches, the royal book on demonology, 8 and popular superstition 
(all so far useful, as they prepared a basis of undoubting faith for 
the poet's serious use of such agencies) had degraded and pol- 
luted the ideas of these mysterious beings by many mean associ- 
ations, Shakspeare does not fear to employ them in high tragedy 
(a tragedy, moreover, which, though not the very greatest of his 
efforts as an intellectual whole, nor as a struggle of passion, is 
among the greatest in any view, and positively the greatest for 
scenical grandeur, and in that respect makes the nearest approach 
of all English tragedies to the Grecian model) ; he does not fear 
to introduce, for the same appalling effect as that for which 
^Eschylus introduced the Eumenides, a triad of old women, 
concerning whom an English wit has remarked this grotesque 
peculiarity in the popular creed of that day, that although potent 
8 The Demonology of James VI. of Scotland. 



BIOGRAPHIES. 635 

over winds and storms, in league with powers of darkness, they 
yet stood in awe of the constable ; — yet, relying on his own 
supreme power to disenchant as well as to enchant, to create and 
to uncreate, he mixes these women and their dark machineries 
with the power of armies, with the agencies of kings, and the 
fortunes of martial kingdoms. Such was the sovereignty of this 
poet, so mighty its compass ! 

A third fund of Shakspeare's peculiar power lies in his teeming 
fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. From his works alone 
might be gathered a golden bead-roll of thoughts the deepest, 
subtlest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally 
intelligible ; the most characteristic also, and appropriate to the 
particular person, the situation, and the case ; yet at the same 
time applicable to the circumstances of every human being under 
all the accidents of life and all vicissitudes of fortune. But this 
subject offers so vast a field of observation, it being so eminently 
the prerogative of Shakspeare to have thought more finely and 
more extensively than all other poets combined, that we cannot 
wrong the dignity of such a theme by doing more, in our narrow 
limits, than simply noticing it as one of the emblazonries upon 
Shakspeare's shield. 

Fourthly, we shall indicate, (and, as in the last case, barely 
indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to offer any inade- 
quate illustrations) one mode of Shakspeare's dramatic excellence 
which hitherto has not attracted any special or separate notice. 
We allude to the forms of life and natural human passion as 
apparent in the structure of his dialogue. Among the many 
defects and infirmities of the French and of the Italian drama, 
indeed we may say of the Greek, the dialogue proceeds always 
by independent speeches, replying indeed to each other, but never 
modified in its several openings by the momentary effect of its 
several terminal forms immediately preceding. Now, in Shak- 
speare, who first set an example of that most important innovation, 
in all his impassioned dialogues each reply or rejoinder seems the 
mere rebound of the previous speech. Every form of natural 



636 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

interruption breaking through the restraints of ceremony under 
the impulses of tempestuous passion ; every form of hasty inter- 
rogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded ; 
every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words ; every 
impatient continuation of the hostile statement ; in short, all 
modes and formulae by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, 
impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can 
disturb or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of com- 
mencement, — these are as rife in Shakspeare's dialogue as in life 
itself; and how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, 
they add to the scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and 
real life, we need not say. A volume might be written illustrating 
the vast varieties of Shakspeare's art and power in this one field 
of improvement ; another volume might be dedicated to the 
exposure of the lifeless and unnatural result from the opposite 
practice in the foreign stages of France and Italy. And we may 
truly say, that were Shakspeare distinguished from them by this 
single feature of nature and propriety, he would on that account 
alone have merited a great immortality. 



XXXII. 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

(1800-1859.) 

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 
The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration. 1 

[Written in 1840.] 

We have a kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt. We form our judg- 
ment of him, indeed, only from events of universal notoriety, from 
his own works, and from the works of other writers, who have 
generally abused him in the most rancorous manner. But, unless 
we are greatly mistaken, he is a very clever, a very honest, and 
a very good-natured man. We can clearly discern, together with 
many merits, many faults both in his writings and in his conduct. 
But we really think that there is hardly a man living whose merits 
have been so grudgingly allowed, and whose faults have been so 
cruelly expiated. 

In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is excellently qualified for 
the task which he has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its 
mannerism, nay, partly by reason of its mannerism, is well suited 
for light, garrulous, desultory ana, half critical, half biographical. 
We do not always agree with his literary judgments ; but we find 
in him what is very rare in our time, the power of justly appreci- 
ating and heartily enjoying good things of very different kinds. 
He can adore Shakspeare and Spenser without denying poetical 

1 From the Edinburgh Review for January, 1841. — 7'he Dramatic Works 
of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, with Biographical and 
Critical Notices. By Leigh Hunt. 8vo. London: 1840. 

637 



638 THOMAS BAB IN G TON MACAULAY. 

genius to the author of Alexander's Feast, or fine observation, rich 
fancy, and exquisite humour to him who imagined Will Honey- 
comb and Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid particular atten- 
tion to the history of the English drama, from the age of Elizabeth 
down to our own time, and has every right to be heard with 
respect on that subject. 

The plays to which he now acts as introducer are, with few 
exceptions, such as, in the opinion of many very respectable 
people, ought not to be reprinted. In this opinion we can by no 
means concur. We cannot wish that any work or class of works 
which has exercised a great influence on the human mind, and 
which illustrates the character of an important epoch in letters, 
politics, and morals, should disappear from the world. If we err 
in this matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men in 
the empire, and especially with the Church of England, and with 
the great schools of learning which are connected with her. The 
whole liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the 
principle, that no book which is valuable, either by reason of 
the excellence of its style, or by reason of the light which it throws 
on the history, polity, and manners of nations, should be withheld 
from the student on account of its impurity. The Athenian Come- 
dies, in which there are scarcely a hundred lines together without 
some passage of which Rochester would have been ashamed, have 
been reprinted at the Pitt Press, and the Clarendon Press, under 
the direction of Syndics and delegates appointed by the Univer- 
sities, and have been illustrated with notes by reverend, very 
reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the 
most distinguished young men in the kingdom are examined by 
bishops and professors of divinity in such works as the Lysistrata 
of Aristophanes and the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is cer- 
tainly something a little ludicrous in the idea of a conclave of 
venerable fathers of the church praising and rewarding a lad on 
account of his intimate acquaintance with writings compared with 
which the loosest tale in Prior is modest. But, for our own part, 
we have no doubt that the greatest societies which direct the 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 639 

education of the English gentry have herein judged wisely. It is 
unquestionable that an extensive acquaintance with ancient litera- 
ture enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a 
man whose mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely 
to be far more useful to the state and to the church than one who 
is unskilled, or little skilled, in classical learning. On the other 
hand, we find it difficult to believe that, in a world so full of 
temptation as this, any gentleman whose life would have been 
virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes and Juvenal will be made 
vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all the influ- 
ences of such a state of society as that in which we live, is yet 
afraid of exposing himself to the influences of a few Greek or 
Latin verses, acts, we think, much like the felon who begged the 
sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held over his head from the 
door of Newgate to the gallows, because it was a drizzling morn- 
ing, and he was apt to take cold. 

The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a 
valetudinarian virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks 
inseparable from all spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps 
out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the 
common food as too stimulating. It would be indeed absurd to 
attempt to keep men from acquiring those qualifications which 
fit them to play their part in life with honour to themselves and 
advantage to their country, for the sake of preserving a delicacy 
which cannot be preserved, a delicacy which a walk from West- 
minster to the Temple is sufficient to destroy. 

But we should be justly chargeable with gross inconsistency if, 
while we defend the policy which invites the youth of our country 
to study such writers as Theocritus and Catullus, we were to set 
up a cry against a new edition of The Country Wife or The Way 
of the World. The immoral English writers of the seventeenth 
century are indeed much less excusable than those of Greece and 
Rome. But the worst English writings of the seventeenth century 
are decent, compared with much that has been bequeathed to us 
by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have little doubt, was a much 



640 THOMAS BASING TON MA CAUL AY. 

better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written 
things at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered. 
Buckhurst and Sedley, even in those wild orgies at the Cock in 
Bow Street for which they were pelted by the rabble and fined 
by the Court of King's Bench, would never have dared to hold 
such discourse as passed between Socrates and Phaedrus on that 
fine summer day under the plane-tree, while the fountain warbled 
at their feet, and the cicadas chirped overhead. If it be, as we 
think it is, desirable that an English gentleman should be well 
informed touching the government and the manners of little com- 
monwealths which both in place and time are far removed from 
us, whose independence has been more than two thousand years 
extinguished, whose language has not been spoken for ages, and 
whose ancient magnificence is attested only by a few broken 
columns and friezes, much more must it be desirable that he 
should be intimately acquainted with the history of the public 
mind of his own country, and with the causes, the nature, and the 
extent of those revolutions of opinion and feeling which, during 
the last two centuries, have alternately raised and depressed the 
standard of our national morality. And knowledge of this sort is 
to be very sparingly gleaned from Parliamentary debates, from 
state papers, and from the works of grave historians. It must 
either not be acquired at all, or it must be acquired by the perusal 
of the light literature which has at various periods been fashion- 
able. We are therefore by no means disposed to condemn this 
publication, though we certainly cannot recommend the handsome 
volume before us as an appropriate Christmas present for young 
ladies. 

We have said that we think the present publication perfectly 
justifiable. But we can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, 
who seems to hold that there is little or no ground for the charge 
of immorality so often brought against the literature of the Resto- 
ration. We do not blame him for not bringing to the judgment- 
seat the merciless rigour of Lord Angelo ; but we really think that 
such flagitious and impudent offenders as those who are now at 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 641 

the bar deserved at least the gentle rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh 
Hunt treats the whole matter a little too much in the easy style of 
Lucio ; and perhaps his exceeding lenity disposes us to be some- 
what too severe. 

And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part 
of our literature is a disgrace to our language and our national 
character. It is clever, indeed, and very entertaining ; but it is, 
in the most emphatic sense of the words, " earthly, sensual, devil- 
ish." Its indecency, though perpetually such as is condemned 
not less by the rules of good taste than by those of morality, is 
not, in our opinion, so disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman 
spirit. We have here Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and 
Ariosto, "graceful and humane," but with the iron eye and cruel 
sneer of Mephistopheles. We find ourselves in a world, in which 
the ladies are like very profligate, impudent and unfeeling men, 
and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandemo- 
nium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads of 
bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire 

of hell. 

Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his 
contemporaries by pleading the example of the earlier English 
dramatists ; and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there is 
force in the plea. We altogether differ from this opinion. The 
crime charged is not mere coarseness of expression. The terms 
which are delicate in one age become gross in the next. The 
diction of the English version of the Pentateuch is sometimes 
such as Addison would not have ventured to imitate ; and Addi- 
son, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used many 
phrases which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be 
designated by a plain noun substantive or by a circumlocution is 
mere matter of fashion. Morality is not at all interested in the 
question. But morality is deeply interested in this, that what is 
immoral shall not be presented to the imagination of the young 
and susceptible in constant connection with what is attractive. 
For every person who has observed the operation of the law of 



642 THOMAS BABIXG TON MA CA ULA V. 

association in his own mind and in the minds of others knows that 
whatever is constantly presented to the imagination in connection 
with what is attractive will itself become attractive. There is 
undoubtedly a great deal of indelicate writing in Fletcher and 
Massinger, and more than might be wished even in Ben Jonson 
and Shakspeare, who are comparatively pure. But it is impossible 
to trace in their plays any systematic attempt to associate vice 
with those things which men value most and desire most, and 
virtue with every thing ridiculous and degrading. And such a 
systematic attempt we find in the whole dramatic literature of the 
generation which followed the return of Charles the Second. 2 .... 

Mr. Charles Lamb, indeed, attempted to set up a defence for 
this way of writing. The dramatists of the latter part of the 
seventeenth century are not, according to him, to be tried by the 
standard of morality which exists, and ought to exist in real life. 
Their world is a conventional world. Their heroes and heroines 
belong, not to England, not to Christendom, but to an Utopia of 
gallantry, to a Fairyland, where the Bible and Burn's Justice are 
unknown, where a prank which on this earth would be rewarded 
with the pillory is merely matter for a peal of elvish laughter. A 
real Horner, a real Careless, would, it is admitted, be exceedingly 
bad men. But to predicate morality or immorality of the Horner 
of Wycherley and the Careless of Congreve is as absurd as it 
would be to arraign a sleeper for his dreams. " They belong to 
the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. When 
we are among them we are among a chaotic people. We are 
not to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are 
insulted by their proceedings, for they have none among them. 
No peace of families is violated, for no family ties exist among 
them. There is neither right nor wrong, gratitude or its opposite, 
claim or duty, paternity or sonship." 

This is, we believe, a fair summary of Mr. Lamb's doctrine. 
We are sure that we do not wish to represent him unfairly. For 

2 Macaulay illustrates his statements by reference to characters in the 
plays of Dryden, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Congreve. 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 643 

we admire his genius ; we love the kind nature which appears in 
all his writings ; and we cherish his memory as much as if we had 
known him personally. But we must plainly say that his argu- 
ment, though ingenious, is altogether sophistical. 

Of course we perfectly understand that it is possible for a writer 
to create a conventional world in which things forbidden by the 
Decalogue and the Statute Book shall be lawful, and yet that the 
exhibition may be harmless, or even edifying. For example, we 
suppose that the most austere critics would not accuse Fenelon 
of impiety and immorality £>n account of his Telemachus and his 
Dialogues of the Dead. In Telemachus and the Dialogues of the 
Dead we have a false religion, and consequently a morality which 
is in some points incorrect. We have a right and a wrong differ- 
ing from the right and the wrong of real life. It is represented 
as the first duty of men to pay honour to Jove and Minerva. 
Philocles, who employs his leisure in making graven images of 
these deities, is extolled for his piety in a way which contrasts 
singularly with the expressions of Isaiah on the same subject. 
The dead are judged by Minos, and rewarded with lasting happi- 
ness for actions which Fenelon would have been the first to pro- 
nounce splendid sins. The same may be said of Mr. Southey's 
Mahommedan and Hindoo heroes and heroines. In Thalaba, to 
speak in derogation of the Arabian impostor is blasphemy : to 
drink wine is a crime : to perform ablutions and to pay honour 
to the holy cities are works of merit. In the Curse of Kehama, 
Kailyal is commended for her devotion to the statue of Mariataly, 
the goddess of the poor. But certainly no person will accuse 
Mr. Southey of having promoted or intended to promote either 
Islamism or Brahminism. 

It is easy to see why the conventional worlds of Fenelon and 
Mr. Southey are unobjectionable. In the first place, they are 
utterly unlike the real world in which we live. The state of 
society, the laws even of the physical world, are so different from 
those with which we are familiar, that we cannot be shocked at 
finding the morality also very different. But in truth the morality 



644 THOMAS BABTNGTOX MACAULAY. 

of these conventional worlds differs from the morality of the real 
world only in points where there is no danger that the real world 
will ever go wrong. The generosity and docility of Telemachus, 
the fortitude, the modesty, the filial tenderness of Kailyal, are 
virtues of all ages and nations. And there was very little danger 
that the Dauphin would worship Minerva, or that an English 
damsel would dance, with a bucket on her head, before the statue 
of Mariataly. 

The case is widely different with what Mr. Charles Lamb calls 
the conventional world of Wycherley *nd Congreve. Here the 
garb, the manners, the topics of conversation are those of the real 
town and of the passing day. The hero is in all superficial 
accomplishments exactly the fine gentleman whom every youth 
in the pit would gladly resemble. The heroine is the fine lady 
whom every youth in the pit would gladly marry. The scene is 
laid in some place which is as well known to the audience as their 
own houses, in St. James's Park, or Hyde Park, or Westminster 
Hall. The lawyer bustles about with his bag, between the Com- 
mon Pleas and the Exchequer. The Peer calls for his carriage 
to go to the House of Lords on a private bill. A hundred little 
touches are employed to make the fictitious world appear like 
the actual world. And the immorality is of a sort which never 
can be out of date, and which all the force of religion, law, and 
public opinion united can but imperfectly restrain. 

In the name of art, as well as in the name of virtue, we protest 
against the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into 
which no moral enters. If comedy be an imitation, under what- 
ever conventions, of real life, how is it possible that it can have 
no reference to the great rule which directs life, and to feelings 
which are called forth by every incident of life? If what Mr. 
Charles Lamb says were correct, the inference would be that these 
dramatists did not in the least understand the very first principles 
of their craft. Pure landscape-painting into which no light or 
shade enters, pure portrait-painting into which no expression 
enters, are phrases less at variance with sound criticism than pure 
comedy into which no moral enters. 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 645 

But it is not the fact that the world of these dramatists is a 
world into which no moral enters. Morality constantly enters into 
that world, a sound morality, and an unsound morality ; the sound 
morality to be insulted, derided, associated with every thing mean 
and hateful ; the unsound morality to be set off to every advan- 
tage, and inculcated by all methods, direct and indirect. It is 
not the fact that none of the inhabitants of this conventional world 
feel reverence for sacred institutions and family ties. Fondlewife, 
Pinchwife, every person in short of narrow understanding and dis- 
gusting manners, expresses that reverence strongly. The heroes 
and heroines, too, have a moral code of their own, an exceedingly 
bad one, but not, as Mr. Charles Lamb seems to think, a code 
existing only in the imagination of dramatists. It is, on the con- 
trary, a code actually received and obeyed by great numbers of 
people. We need not go to Utopia or Fairyland to find them. 
They are near at hand. Every night some of them cheat at the 
hells in the Quadrant, and others pace the Piazza in Covent 
Garden. Without flying to Nephelococcygia or to the Court of 
Queen Mab, we can meet with sharpers, bullies, hard-hearted 
impudent debauchees, and women worthy of such paramours. 
The morality of The Country Wife and The Old Bachelor is the 
morality, not, as Mr. Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, 
but of a world which is a great deal too real. It is the morality, 
not of a chaotic people, but of low town-rakes, and of those ladies 
whom the newspapers call " dashing Cyprians." And the ques- 
tion is simply this, whether a man of genius who constantly and 
systematically endeavours to make this sort of character attractive, 
by uniting it with beauty, grace, dignity, spirit, a high social posi- 
tion, popularity, literature, wit, taste, knowledge of the world, 
brilliant success in every undertaking, does or does not make an 
ill use of his powers. We own that we are unable to understand 
how this question can be answered in any way but one. 

It must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of 
whom we have spoken thus severely, that they were, to a great 
extent, the creatures of their age. And if it be asked why that 



646 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY. 

age encouraged immorality which no other age would have toler- 
ated, we have no hesitation in answering that this great depra- 
vation of the national taste was the effect of the prevalence of 
Puritanism under the Commonwealth. 

To punish public outrages on morals and religion is unquestion- 
ably within the competence of rulers. But when a government, 
not content with requiring decency, requires sanctity, it oversteps 
the bounds which mark its proper functions. And it may be laid 
down as a universal rule that a government which attempts more 
than it ought will perform less. A lawgiver who, in order to 
protect distressed borrowers, limits the rate of interest, either 
makes it impossible for the objects of his care to borrow at all, 
or places them at the mercy of the worst class of usurers. A 
lawgiver who, from tenderness for labouring men, fixes the hours 
of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make 
them far more wretched than he found them. And so a govern- 
ment which, not content with repressing scandalous excesses, 
demands from its subjects fervent and austere piety, will soon 
discover that, while attempting to render an impossible service to 
the cause of virtue, it has in truth only promoted vice. 

For what are the means by which a government can effect its 
ends ? Two only, reward and punishment ; powerful means, 
indeed, for influencing the exterior act, but altogether impotent 
for the purpose of touching the heart. A public functionary who 
is told that he will be promoted if he is a devout Catholic, and 
turned out of his place if he is not, will probably go to mass 
every morning, exclude meat from his table on Fridays, shrive 
himself regularly, and perhaps let his superiors know that he 
wears a hair shirt next his skin. Under a Puritan government, a 
person who is apprised that piety is essential to thriving in the 
world will be strict in the observance of the Sunday, or, as he will 
call it, Sabbath, and will avoid a theatre as if it were plague- 
stricken. Such a show of religion as this the hope of gain and 
the fear of loss will produce, at a week's notice, in any abundance 
which a government may require. But under this show, sensu- 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 647 

ality, ambition, avarice, and hatred retain unimpaired power, and 
the seeming convert has only added to the vices of a man of the 
world all the still darker vices which are engendered by the con- 
stant practice of dissimulation. The truth cannot be long con- 
cealed. The public discovers that the grave persons who are 
proposed to it as patterns are more utterly destitute of moral 
principle and of moral sensibility than avowed libertines. It sees 
that these Pharisees are farther removed from real goodness than 
publicans and harlots. And, as usual, it rushes to the extreme 
opposite to that which it quits. It considers a high religious pro- 
fession as a sure mark of meanness and depravity. On the very 
first day on which the restraint of fear is taken away, and on 
which men can venture to say what they think, a frightful peal of 
blasphemy and ribaldry proclaims that the short-sighted policy 
which aimed at making a nation of saints has made a nation of 
scoffers. 

It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. Lewis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious ; 
he determined that his subjects should be religious too ; he 
shrugged his shoulders and knitted his brows if he observed at 
his levee or near his dinner-table any gentleman who neglected 
the duties enjoined by the church, and rewarded piety with blue 
ribands, invitations to Marli, governments, pensions, and regi- 
ments. Forthwith Versailles became, in every thing but dress, a 
convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded by 
swords and embroidery. The Marshals of France were much in 
prayer; and there was hardly one among the Dukes and Peers 
who did not carry good little books in his pocket, fast during 
Lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de Maintenon, who 
had a great share in the blessed work, boasted that devotion had 
become quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was ; and like a 
fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried 
to St. Denis than the whole court unmasked. Every man has- 
tened to indemnify himself, by the excess of licentiousness and 
impudence, for years of mortification. The same persons who, 



648 THOMAS B A BIN G TON MAC AC/I AY. 

a few months before, with meek voices and demure looks, had 
consulted divines about the state of their souls, now surrounded the 
midnight table where, amidst the bounding of champagne corks, a 
drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois and Madame de Par- 
abere, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene jests. 
The early part of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth had been a 
time of license ; but the most dissolute men of that generation 
would have blushed at the orgies of the Regency. 

It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil 
War. We are by no means unmindful of the great debt which 
mankind owes to the Puritans of that time, the deliverers of 
England, the founders of the American Commonwealths. But in 
the day of their power, those men committed one great fault, 
which left deep and lasting traces in the national character and 
manners. They mistook the end and overrated the force of gov- 
ernment. They determined, not merely to protect religion and 
public morals from insult, an object for which the civil sword, in 
discreet hands, may be beneficially employed, but to make the 
people committed to their rule truly devout. Yet, if they had 
only reflected on events which they had themselves witnessed and 
in which they had themselves borne a great part, they would have 
seen what was likely to be the result of their enterprise. They 
had lived under a government which, during a long course of 
years, did all that could be done, by lavish bounty and by rigorous 
punishment, to enforce conformity to the doctrine and discipline 
of the Church of England. No person suspected of hostility to 
that Church had the smallest chance of obtaining favour at the 
court of Charles. Avowed dissent was punished by imprison- 
ment, by ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by ruin- 
ous fines. And the event had been that the Church had fallen, and 
had, in its fall, dragged down with it a monarchy which had stood 
six hundred years. The Puritan might have learned, if from 
nothing else, yet from his own recent victory, that governments 
which attempt things beyond their reach are likely not merely to 
fail, but to produce an effect directly the opposite of that which 
they contemplate as desirable. 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 649 

All this was overlooked. The saints were to inherit the earth. 
The theatres were closed. The fine arts were placed under 
absurd restraints. Vices which had never before been even mis- 
demeanors were made capital felonies. It was solemnly resolved 
by Parliament " that no person shall be employed but such as the 
House shall be satisfied of his real godliness." The pious assem- 
bly had a Bible lying on the table for reference. If they had 
consulted it they might have learned that the wheat and the tares 
grow together inseparably, and must either be spared together or 
rooted up together. To know whether a man was .really godly 
was impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain 
dress, lank hair, no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his 
house ; whether he talked through his nose, and showed the 
whites of his eyes ; whether he named his children Assurance, 
Tribulation, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz ; whether he avoided 
Spring Garden when in town, abstained from hunting and hawking 
when in the country ; whether he expounded hard scriptures to his 
troop of dragoons, and talked in a committee of ways and means 
about seeking the Lord. These were tests which could easily be 
applied. The misfortune was that they were tests which proved 
nothing. Such as they were, they were employed by the dominant 
party. And the consequence was that a crowd of impostors, in 
every walk of life, began to mimic and to caricature what were then 
regarded as the outward signs of sanctity. The nation was not 
duped. The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would 
have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were uni- 
versally believed to be saints. Those restraints became altogether 
insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit 
of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal family 
had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Crom- 
well had been at the head of the administration, there would have 
been a great relaxation of manners. Before the Restoration many 
signs indicated that a period of license was at hand. The Resto- 
ration crushed for a time the Puritan .party, and placed supreme 
power in the hands of a libertine. The political counter-revolu- 



650 THOMAS BASING TON MA CAUL AY. 

tion assisted the moral counter-revolution, and was in turn assisted 
by it. A period of wild and desperate dissoluteness followed. 
Even in remote manor-houses and hamlets the change was in 
some degree felt ; but in London the outbreak of debauchery was 
appalling ; and in London the places most deeply infected were 
the Palace, the quarters inhabited by the aristocracy, and the Inns 
of Court. It was on the support of these parts of the town that 
the play-houses depended. The character of the drama became 
conformed to the character of its patrons. The comic poet was 
the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted 
society. And in the plays before us we find, distilled and con- 
densed, the essential spirit of the fashionable world during the 
Anti-puritan reaction. 

The Puritan had affected formality ; the comic poet laughed at 
decorum. The Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions ; the 
comic poet took under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. 
The Puritan had canted ; the comic poet blasphemed. The 
Puritan had made an affair of gallantry felony without benefit of 
clergy; the comic poet represented it as an honourable distinc- 
tion. The Puritan spoke with disdain of the low standard of 
popular morality ; his life was regulated by a far more rigid code ; 
his virtue was sustained by motives unknown to men of the world. 
Unhappily it had been amply proved in many cases, and might 
well be suspected in many more, that these high pretensions were 
unfounded. Accordingly, the fashionable circles, and the comic 
poets who were the spokesmen of those circles, took up the notion 
that all professions of piety and integrity were to be construed by 
the rule of contrary ; that it might well be doubted whether there 
was such a thing as virtue in the world ; but that, at all events, 
a person who affected to be better than his neighbours was sure 
to be a knave. 

In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. 
But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher 
with those contained in the volume before us will see how much 
the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 65 1 

goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period. The 
nation resembled the demoniac in the New Testament. The 
Puritans boasted that the unclean spirit was cast out. The house 
was empty, swept, and garnished ; and for a time the expelled 
tenant wandered through dry places seeking rest and finding none. 
But the force of the exorcism was spent. The fiend returned to 
his abode ; and returned not alone. He took to him seven other 
spirits more wicked than himself. They entered in, and dwelt 
together : and the second possession was worse than the first. 3 
****** 

We pass a very severe censure on Wycherley, when we say that 
it is a relief to turn from him to Congreve. Congreve's writings, 
indeed, are by no means pure ; nor was he, as far as we are able 
to judge, a warm-hearted or high-minded man. Yet, in coming 
to him, we feel that the worst is over, that we are one remove fur- 
ther from the Restoration, that we are past the Nadir of national 
taste and morality. 

William Congreve was born in 1670, at Bardsey, in the neigh- 
bourhood of Leeds. His father, a younger son of a very ancient 
Staffordshire family, had distinguished himself among the cavaliers 
in the civil war, was set down after the Restoration for the Order 
of the Royal Oak, and subsequently settled in Ireland, under the 
patronage of the Earl of Burlington. 

Congreve passed his childhood and youth in Ireland. He was 
sent to school at Kilkenny, and thence went to the University of 
Dublin. His learning does great honour to his instructors. From 
his writings it appears, not only that he was well acquainted with 
Latin literature, but that his knowledge of the Greek poets was 
such as was not, in his time, common even in a college. 

When he had completed his academical studies, he was sent to 
London to study the law, and was entered of the Middle Temple. 
He troubled himself, however, very little about pleading or con- 
veyancing, and gave himself up to literature and society. Two 
kinds of ambition early took possession of his mind, and often 
3 Macaulay's criticism of Wycherley is omitted. 



652 THOMAS BAB IMG TON MACAU LAW 

pulled it in opposite directions. He was conscious of great fer- 
tility of thought and power of ingenious combination. His lively 
conversation, his polished manners, and his highly respectable 
connections, had obtained for him ready access to the best com- 
pany. He longed to be a great writer. He longed to be a man 
of fashion. Either object was within his reach. But could he 
secure both? Was there not something vulgar in letters, some- 
thing inconsistent with the easy apathetic graces of the man of the 
mode? Was it aristocratical to be confounded with creatures 
who lived in the cocklofts of Grub Street, to bargain with pub- 
lishers, to hurry printers' devils and be hurried by them, to squab- 
ble with managers, to be applauded or hissed by pit, boxes, and 
galleries ? Could he forego the renown of being the first wit of 
his age? Could he attain that renown without sullying what he 
valued quite as much, his character for gentility ? The history of 
his life is the history of a conflict between these two impulses. 
In his youth the desire of literary fame had the mastery ; but soon 
the meaner ambition overpowered the higher, and obtained su- 
preme dominion over his mind. 

His first work, a novel of no great value, he published under 
the assumed name of Cleophil. His second was The Old Bachelo?', 
acted in 1693, a play inferior indeed to his other comedies, but, 
in his own line, inferior to them alone. The plot is equally des- 
titute of interest and of probability. The characters are either 
not distinguishable, or are distinguished only by peculiarities of 
the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit 
and eloquence, which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes 
in for an ample share, and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a 
certain indescribable ease, of which Wycherley had given no ex- 
ample, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The 
author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written 
a good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, 
pretended that he had merely scribbled a few scenes for his own 
amusement, and affected to yield unwillingly to the importunities 
of those who pressed him to try his fortune on the stage. The 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 653 

Old Bachelor was seen in manuscript by Dryden, one of whose 
best qualities was a hearty and generous admiration for the talents 
of others. He declared that he had never read such a first play, 
and lent his services to bring it into a form fit for representation. 
Nothing was wanted to the success of the piece. It was so cast 
as to bring into play all the comic talent, and to exhibit on the 
boards in one view all the beauty, which Drury Lane Theatre, then 
the only theatre in London, could assemble. The result was a 
complete triumph ; and the author was gratified with rewards more 
substantial than the applauses of the pit. Montagu, then a lord of 
the treasury, immediately gave him a place, and, in a short time, 
added the reversion of another place of much greater value, which, 
however, did not become vacant till many years had elapsed. 

In 1694, Congreve brought out The Double Dealer, a comedy 
in which all the powers which had produced The Old Bachelor 
showed themselves, matured by time and improved by exercise. 
But the audience was shocked by the characters of Maskwell and 
Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is something strangely 
revolting in the way in which a group that seems to belong to the 
house of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst of the 
Brisks, Froths, Carelesses, and Plyants. The play was unfavourably 
received. Yet, if the praise of distinguished men could compen- 
sate an author for the disapprobation of the multitude, Congreve 
had no reason to repine. Dryden, in one of the most ingenious, 
magnificent, and pathetic pieces that he ever wrote, extolled the 
author of The Double Dealer in terms which now appear extrava- 
gantly hyperbolical. Till Congreve came forth, — so ran this 
exquisite flattery, — the superiority of the poets who preceded the 
civil wars was acknowledged. 

"Theirs was the giant race before the flood." 

Since the return of the Royal House, much art and ability had 
been exerted, but the old masters had been still unrivalled. 

" Our builders were with want of genius curst, 
The second temple was not like the first." 



654 THOMAS BARINGTOX MACAU LAY. 

At length a writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, 
had surpassed the authors of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 
and of The Silent Woman, and who had only one rival left to con- 
tend with. 

" Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, 
To Shakspeare gave as much, she could not give him more." 

Some lines near the end of the poem are singularly graceful and 
touching, and sank deep into the heart of Congreve. 

" Already am I worn with cares and age, 
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage; 
But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn, 
Whom I foresee to better fortune born, 
Be kind to my remains; and, oh, defend 
Against your judgment your departed friend. 
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue, 
But guard those laurels which descend to you." 

The crowd, as usual, gradually came over to the opinion of the 
men of note ; and The Double Dealer was before long quite as 
much admired, though perhaps never so much liked, as The Old 
Bachelor. 

In 1695 appeared Love for Love, superior both in wit and in 
scenic effect to either of the preceding plays. It was performed 
at a new theatre which Betterton and some other actors, disgusted 
by the treatment which they had received in Drury Lane, had just 
opened in a tennis-court near Lincoln's Inn. Scarcely any com- 
edy within the memory of the oldest man had been equally suc- 
cessful. The actors were so elated that they gave Congreve a 
share in their theatre ; and he promised in return to furnish them 
with a play every year, if his health would permit. Two years 
passed, however, before he produced The Mourning Bride, a play 
which, paltry as it is when 'Compared, we do not say, with Lear or 
Macbeth, but with the best dramas of Massinger and Ford, stands 
very high among the tragedies of the age in which it was written. 
To find any thing so good we must go twelve years back to 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 655 

Venice Preserved, or six years forward to The Fair Penitent. 
The noble passage which Johnson, both in writing and in conver- 
sation, extolled above any other in the English drama, has suf- 
fered greatly in the public estimation from the extravagance of 
his praise. Had he contented himself with saying that it was finer 
than any thing in the tragedies of Dryden, Otway, Lee, Rowe, 
Southern, Hughes, and Addison, than any thing, in short, that had 
been written for the stage since the days of Charles the First, he 
would not have been in the wrong. 

The success of The Mourning Bride was even greater than that 
of Love for Love. Congreve was now allowed to be the first tragic, 
as well as the first comic dramatist of his time ; and all this at 
twenty-seven. We believe that no English writer except Lord 
Byron has, at so early an age, stood so high in the estimation of 
his contemporaries. 

At this time took place an event which deserves, in our opinion, 
a very different sort of notice from that which has been bestowed 
on it by Mr. Leigh Hunt. The nation had now nearly recovered 
from the demoralizing effect of the Puritan austerity. The gloomy 
follies of the reign of the Saints were but faintly remembered. 
The evils produced by profaneness and debauchery were recent 
and glaring. The Court, since the Revolution, had ceased to 
patronise licentiousness. Mary was strictly pious ; and the vices 
of the cold, stern, and silent William, were not obtruded on the 
public eye. Discountenanced by the government, and falling in 
the favour of the people, the profligacy of the Restoration still 
maintained its ground in some parts of society. Its strongholds 
were the places where men of wit and fashion congregated, and 
above all, the theatres. At this conjuncture arose a great reformer 
whom, widely as we differ from him in many important points, we 
can never mention without respect. 

Jeremy Collier was a clergyman of the Church of England, 
bred at Cambridge. His talents and attainments were such as 
might have been expected to raise him to the highest honours of 
his profession. He had an extensive knowledge of books ; yet he 



656 THOMAS BABINGTOX MACAU LAY. 

had mingled much with polite society, and is said not to have 
wanted either grace or vivacity in conversation. There were few 
branches of literature to which he had not paid some attention. 
But ecclesiastical antiquity was his favourite study. In religious 
opinions he belonged to that section of the Church of England which 
lies furthest from Geneva and nearest to Rome. His notions touching 
Episcopal government, holy orders, the efficacy of the sacraments, 
the authority of the Fathers, the guilt of schism, the importance of 
vestments, ceremonies, and solemn days, differed little from those 
which are now held by Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman. Towards the 
close of his life, indeed, Collier took some steps which brought 
him still nearer to Popery, mixed water with the wine in the Eu- 
charist, made the sign of the cross in confirmation, employed oil 
in the visitation of the sick, and offered up prayers for the dead. 
His politics were of a piece with his divinity. He was a Tory of 
the highest sort, such as in the cant of his age was called a Tantivy. 
Not even the persecution of the bishops and the spoliation of the 
universities could shake his steady loyalty. While the Convention 
was sitting, he wrote with vehemence in defence of the fugitive 
king, and was in consequence arrested. But his dauntless spirit 
was not to be so tamed. He refused to take the oaths, renounced 
all his preferments, and, in a succession of pamphlets written with 
much violence and with some ability, attempted to excite the 
nation against its new masters. In 1692, he was again arrested on 
suspicion of having been concerned in a treasonable plot. So 
unbending were his principles that his friends could hardly per- 
suade him to let them bail him ; and he afterwards expressed his 
remorse for having been induced thus to acknowledge, by impli- 
cation, the authority of an usurping government. He was soon in 
trouble again. Sir John Friend and Sir William Parkins were tried 
and convicted of high treason for planning the murder of King 
William. Collier administered spiritual consolation to them, at- 
tended them to Tyburn, and, just before they were turned off, 
laid his hands on their heads, and by the authority which he 
derived from Christ, solemnly absolved them. This scene gave 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 657 

indescribable scandal. Tories joined with Whigs in blaming the 
conduct of the daring priest. Some acts, it was said, which fall 
under the definition of treason are such that a good man may, in 
troubled times, be led into them even by his virtues. It may be 
necessary for the protection of society to punish such a man. But 
even in punishing him we consider him as legally rather than mor- 
ally guilty, and hope that his honest error, though it cannot be 
pardoned here, will not be counted to him for sin hereafter. But 
such was not the case of Collier's penitents. They were concerned 
in a plot for waylaying and butchering, in an hour of security, one 
who, whether he were or were not their king, was at all events 
their fellow-creature. Whether the Jacobite theory about the 
rights of governments and the duties of subjects were or were not 
well founded, assassination must always be considered as a great 
crime. It is condemned even by the maxims of worldly honour 
and morality. Much more must it be an object of abhorrence 
to the pure Spouse of Christ. The Church cannot surely, without 
the saddest and most mournful forebodings, see one of her chil- 
dren who has been guilty of this great wickedness pass into eternity 
without any sign of repentance. That these traitors had given any 
sign of repentance was not alleged. It might be that they had 
privately declared their contrition j and, if so, the minister of re- 
ligion might be justified in privately assuring them of the Divine 
forgiveness. But a public remission ought to have been preceded 
by a public atonement. The regret of these men, if expressed at 
all, had been expressed in secret. The hands of Collier had been 
laid on them in the presence of thousands. The inference which 
his enemies drew from his conduct was that he did not consider 
the conspiracy against the life of William as sinful. But this infer- 
ence he very vehemently, and, we doubt not, very sincerely de- 
nied. 

The storm raged. The bishops put forth a solemn censure of the 
absolution. The Attorney-General brought the matter before the 
Court of King's Bench. Collier had now made up his mind not 
to give bail for his appearance before any court which derived its 



658 THOMAS BARING TON MA t A VI. A V. 

authority from the usurper. He accordingly absconded and was 
outlawed. He survived these events about thirty years. The 
prosecution was not pressed ; and he was soon suffered to resume 
his literary pursuits in quiet. At a later period, many attempts 
were made to shake his perverse integrity by offers of wealth and 
dignity, but in vain. When he died, towards the end of the reign 
of George the First, he was still under the ban of the law. 

We shall not be suspected of regarding either the politics or 
the theology of Collier with partiality; but we believe him to 
have been as honest and courageous a man as ever lived. We 
will go further, and say that, though passionate and often wrong- 
headed, he was a singularly fair controversialist, candid, generous, 
too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most ex- 
citing disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. 
It must also be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and 
political affairs, though in themselves absurd and pernicious, emi- 
nently qualified him to be the reformer of our lighter literature. 
The libertinism of the press and of the stage was, as we have said, 
the effect of a reaction against the Puritan strictness. Profligacy 
was, like the oak leaf of the twenty-ninth of May, the badge of a 
cavalier and a high churchman. Decency was associated with 
conventicles and calves' heads. Grave prelates were too much 
disposed to wink at the excesses of a body of zealous and able 
allies who covered Roundheads and Presbyterians with ridicule. 
If a Whig raised his voice against the impiety and licentiousness 
of the fashionable writers, his mouth was instantly stopped by the 
retort : — You are one of those who groan at a light quotation from 
Scripture, and raise estates out of the plunder of the Church, who 
shudder at a double entendre, and chop off the heads of kings. 
A Baxter, a Burnet, even a Tillotson, would have done little to 
purify our literature: But when a man fanatical in the cause of 
episcopacy and actually under outlawry for his attachment to 
hereditary right, came forward as the champion of decency, the 
battle was already half won. 

In 1698, Collier published his Short View of the Prof a neness and 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 659 

Immorality of the English Stage, a book which threw the whole 
literary world into commotion, but which is now much less read 
than it deserves. The faults of the work, indeed, are neither few 
nor small. The dissertations on the Greek and Latin drama do 
not at all help the argument, and, whatever may have been 
thought of them by the generation which fancied that Christ 
Church had refuted Bentley, are such as, in the present day, a 
scholar of very humble pretensions may venture to pronounce 
boyish, or rather babyish. The censures are not sufficiently dis- 
criminating. The authors whom Collier accused had been guilty 
of such gross sins against decency that he was certain to weaken 
instead of strengthening his case, by introducing into his charge 
against them any matter about which there could be the smallest 
dispute. He was, however, so injudicious as to place among the 
outrageous offences which he justly arraigned, some things which 
are really quite innocent, and some slight instances of levity which, 
though not perhaps strictly correct, could easily be paralleled 
from the works of writers who had rendered great services to 
morality and religion. Thus he blames Congreve, the number 
and gravity of whose real transgressions made it quite unnecessary 
to tax him with any that were not real, for using the words 
" martyr " and " inspiration " in a light sense ; as if an archbishop 
might not say that a speech was inspired by claret, or that an 
alderman was a martyr to the gout. Sometimes, again, Collier 
does not sufficiently distinguish between the dramatist and the 
persons of the drama. Thus he blames Vanbrugh for putting into 
Lord Foppington's mouth some contemptuous expressions respect- 
ing the Church service ; though it is obvious that Vanbrugh 
could not better express reverence than by making Lord Fop- 
pington express contempt. There is also throughout the Short 
View too strong a display of professional feeling. Collier is not 
content with claiming for his order an immunity from indiscrimi- 
nate scurrility ; he will not allow that, in any case, any word or act 
of a divine can be a proper subject for ridicule. Nor does he 
confine this benefit of clergy to the ministers of the Established 



660 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

Church. He extends the privilege to Catholic priests, and, what 
in him is more surprising, to Dissenting preachers. This, how- 
ever, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins, priests of Jupiter, 
priests of Baal, are all to be held sacred. Dryden is blamed for 
making the Mufti in Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is called 
to a severe account for his incivility to Tiresias. But the most 
curious passage is that in which Collier resents some uncivil re- 
flections thrown by Cassandra, in Dryden's Cleomenes, on the calf 
Apis and his hierophants. The words " grass- eating, foddered 
god," words which really are much in the style of several passages 
in the Old Testament, give as much offence to this Christian 
divine as they could have given to the priests of Memphis. 

But, when all deductions have been made, great merit must be 
allowed to this work. There is hardly any book of that time 
from which it would be possible to select specimens of writing 
so excellent and so various. To compare Collier with Pascal 
would indeed be absurd. Yet we hardly know where, except in 
the Provincial Letters, we can find mirth so harmoniously and 
becomingly blended with solemnity as in the Short View. In 
truth, all the modes of ridicule, from broad fun to polished and 
antithetical sarcasm, were at Collier's command. On the other 
hand, he was complete master of the rhetoric of honest indigna- 
tion. We scarcely know any volume which contains so many 
bursts of that peculiar eloquence which comes from the heart and 
goes to the heart. Indeed the spirit of the book is truly heroic. 
In order fairly to appreciate it, we must remember the situation 
in which the writer stood. He was under the frown of power. 
His name was already a mark for the invectives of one half of the 
writers of the age, when, in the cause of good taste, good sense, and 
good morals, he gave battle to the other half. Strong as his political 
prejudices were, he seems on this occasion to have entirely laid 
them aside. He has forgotten that he is a Jacobite, and remem- 
bers only that he is a citizen and a Christian. Some of his 
sharpest censures are directed against poetry which had been 
hailed with delight by the Tory party, and had inflicted a deep 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 661 

wound on the Whigs. It is inspiriting to see how gallantly the 
solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies, formidable separately, 
and, it might have been thought, irresistible when combined, 
distributes his swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, 
Congreve, and Vanbrugh, treads the wretched D'Urfey down in 
the dirt beneath his feet, and strikes with all his strength full at 
the towering crest of Dryden. 

The effect produced by the Short View was immense. The 
nation was on the side of Collier. But it could not be doubted 
that in the great host which he had defied, some champion would 
be found to lift the gauntlet. The general belief was that Dryden 
would take the field ; and all the wits anticipated a sharp contest 
between two well-paired combatants. The great poet had been 
singled out in the most marked manner. It was well known that 
he was deeply hurt, that much smaller provocations had formerly 
roused him to violent resentment, and that there was no literary 
weapon, offensive or defensive, of which he was not master. But 
his conscience smote him ; he stood abashed, like the fallen arch- 
angel at the rebuke of Zephon, — 

" And felt how awful goodness is, and saw 
Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw and pined 
His loss." 

At a later period ' he mentioned the Short View in the preface to 
his Fables. He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness 
with which he had been treated, and urged some matters in miti- 
gation. But, on the whole, he frankly acknowledged that he had 
been justly reproved. " If," said he, " Mr. Collier be my enemy, 
let him triumph. If he be my friend, as I have given him no per- 
sonal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance." 
It would have been wise in Congreve to follow his master's 
example. He was precisely in that situation in which it is mad- 
ness to attempt a vindication ; for his guilt was so clear that no 
address or eloquence could obtain an acquittal. On the other 
hand, there were in his case many extenuating circumstances 



662 THOMAS BABINGTON MAC AULA Y. 

which, if he had acknowledged his error and promised amend- 
ment, would have procured his pardon. The most rigid censor 
could not but make great allowances for the faults into which so 
young a man had been seduced by evil example, .by the luxuri- 
ance of a vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular 
applause. The esteem, as well as the admiration, of the public 
was still within his reach. He might easily have effaced all 
memory of his transgressions, and have shared with Addison the 
glory of showing that the most brilliant wit may be the ally of 
virtue. But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him 
from encountering Collier. The non-juror was a man thoroughly 
fitted by nature, education, and habit, for polemical dispute. 
Congreve's mind, though a mind of no common fertility and 
vigour, was of a different class. No man understood so well the 
art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest efful- 
gence, and setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In 
this sort of jewellery he attained to a mastery unprecedented and 
inimitable. But he was altogether rude in the art of controversy j 
and he had a cause to defend which scarcely any art could have 
rendered victorious. 

The event was such as might have been foreseen. Congreve's 
answer was a complete failure. He was angry, obscure, and dull. 
Even the Green Room and Will's Coffee- House were compelled to 
acknowledge that in wit, as well as in argument, the parson had a 
decided advantage over the poet. Not only was Congreve unable 
to make any show of a case where he was in the wrong ; but he 
succeeded in putting himself completely in the wrong where he 
was in the right. Collier had taxed him with profaneness for 
calling a clergyman Mr. Prig, and for introducing a coachman 
named Jehu, in allusion to the King of Israel, who was known at a 
distance by his furious driving. Had there been nothing worse in 
The Old Bachelor and Double Dealer, Congreve might pass for 
as pure a writer as Cowper himself, who, in poems revised by so 
austere a censor as John Newton, calls a fox-hunting squire Nim- 
rod, and gives to a chaplain the disrespectful name of Smug. Con- 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 663 

greve might with good effect have appealed to the public whether 
it might not be fairly presumed that, when such frivolous charges 
were made, there were no very serious charges to make. Instead 
of doing this, he pretended that he meant no allusion to the Bible 
by the name of Jehu, and no reflection by the name of Prig. 
Strange, that a man of such parts should, in order to defend 
himself against imputations which nobody could regard as im- 
portant, tell untruths which it was certain that nobody would 
believe ! 

One of the pleas which Congreve set up for himself and his 
brethren was that, though they might be guilty of a little levity 
here and there, they were careful to inculcate a moral, packed 
close into two or three lines, at the end of every play. Had the 
fact been as he stated it, the defence would be worth very little. 
For no man acquainted with human nature could think that a 
sententious couplet would undo all the mischief that five profli- 
gate acts had done. But it would have been wise in Congreve to 
have looked again at his own comedies before he used this argu- 
ment. Collier did so ; and found that the moral of The Old 
Bachelor, the grave apophthegm which is to be a set-off against all 
the libertinism of the piece, is contained in the following triplet : 

" What rugged ways attend the noon of life ! 
Our sun declines, and with what anxious strife, 
What pain, we tug that galling load — a wife." 

" Love for Love" says Collier, " may have a somewhat better 
farewell, but it would do a man little service should he remember 
it to his dying day : " — 

" The miracle to-day is, that we find 
A lover true, not that a woman's kind." 

Collier's reply was severe and triumphant. One of his repar- 
tees we will quote, not as a favourable specimen of his manner, 
but because it was called forth by Congreve's characteristic affec- 
tation. The poet spoke of The Old Bachelor- as a trifle to which 



664 THOMAS BASING TON M AC AULA Y. 

he attached no value, and which had become public by a sort of 
accident. " I wrote it," he said, " to amuse myself in a slow re- 
covery from a fit of sickness." i( What his disease was," replied 
Collier, " I am not to inquire : but it must be a very ill one to be 
worse than the remedy." 

All that Congreve gained by coming forward on this occasion, 
was that he completely deprived himself of the excuse which he 
might with justice have pleaded for his early offences. " Why," 
asked Collier, " should the man laugh at the mischief of the boy, 
and make the disorders of his nonage his own, by an after appro- 
bation?" 

Congreve was not Collier's only opponent. Vanbrugh, Dennis, 
and Settle took the field. And from a passage in a contem- 
porary satire, we are inclined to think that among the answers to 
the Short View was one written, or supposed to be written, by 
Wycherley. The victory remained with Collier. A great and 
rapid reform in almost all the departments of our lighter literature 
was the effect of his labours. A new race of wits and poets arose, 
who generally treated with reverence the great ties which bind 
society together, and whose very indecencies were decent when 
compared with those of the school which nourished during the 
last forty years of the seventeenth century. 

This controversy probably prevented Congreve from fulfilling 
the engagements into which he had entered with the actors. It 
was not until 1 700 that he produced The Way of the World, the 
most deeply meditated and the most brilliantly written of all his 
works. It wants, perhaps, the constant movement, the efferves- 
cence of animal spirits, which we find in Love for Love. But the 
hysterical rants of Lady Wishfort, the meeting of Witwould and 
his brother, the country knight's courtship and his subsequent 
revel, and, above all, the chase and surrender of Millamant, are 
superior to anything that is to be found in the whole range of 
English comedy from the civil war downwards. It is quite inex- 
plicable to us that this play should have failed on the stage. Yet 
so it was; and the author, already sore with the wounds which 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 665 

Collier had inflicted, was galled past endurance by this new 
stroke. He resolved never again to expose himself to the rude- 
ness of a tasteless audience, and took leave of the theatre forever. 

He lived twenty-eight years longer, without adding to the high 
literary reputation which he had attained. He read much while 
he retained his eye- sight, and now and then wrote a short essay, 
or put an idle tale into verse ; but he appears never to have 
planned any considerable work. The miscellaneous pieces which 
he published in 1710 are of little value, and have long been for- 
gotten. 

The stock of fame which he had acquired by his comedies was 
sufficient, assisted by the graces of his manner and conversation, 
to secure for him a high place in the estimation of the world. 
During the winter, he lived among the most distinguished and 
agreeable people in London. His summers were passed at the 
splendid country-seats of ministers and peers. Literary envy and 
political faction, which in that age respected nothing else, re- 
spected his repose. He professed to be one of the party of 
which his patron Montagu, now Lord Halifax, was the head. But 
he had civil words and small good offices for men of every shade 
of opinion. And men of every shade of opinion spoke well of 
him in return. 

His means were for a long time scanty. The place which he 
had in possession barely enabled him to live with comfort. And, 
when the Tories came into power, some thought that he would 
lose even this moderate provision. But Harley, who was by no 
means disposed to adopt the exterminating policy of the October 
club, and who, with all his faults of understanding and temper, 
had a sincere kindness for men of genius, reassured the anxious 
poet by quoting very gracefully and happily the lines of Virgil, 

" Non obtusa adco gestamus peclora Pceni, 
Nee tarn aversus equos Tyria Sol jnngit ab urbe." 4 

4 We Carthaginians do not have sueh tin feeling breasts, nor does the sun 
so hostile to the Tyrian city harness his horses. — VIRGIL, ^neid, I. 567-8. 



666 THOMAS BABINGTON MA CAUL AY. 

The indulgence with which Congreve was treated by the Tories 
was not purchased by any concession on his part which could justly 
offend the Whigs. It was his rare good fortune to share the tri- 
umph of his friends without having shared their proscription. 
When the House of Hanover came to the throne, he partook 
largely of the prosperity of those with whom he was connected. 
The reversion to which he had been nominated twenty years before 
fell in. He was made secretary to the island of Jamaica ; and his 
whole income amounted to twelve hundred a year, a fortune which, 
for a single man, was in that age not only easy but splendid. He 
continued, however, to practise the frugality which he had learned 
when he could scarce spare, as Swift tells us, a shilling to pay the 
chairman who carried him to Lord Halifax's. Though he had 
nobody to save for, he laid up at least as much as he spent. 

The infirmities of age came early upon him. His habits had. 
been intemperate ; he suffered much from gout ; and, when con- 
fined to his chamber, he had no longer the solace of literature. 
Blindness, the most cruel misfortune that can befall the lonely stu- 
dent, made his books useless to him. He was thrown on society 
for all his amusement ; and in society his good breeding and 
vivacity made him always welcome. 

By the rising men of letters he was considered not as a rival, but 
as a classic. He had left their arena ; he never measured his 
strength with them ; and he was always loud in applause of their 
exertions. They could, therefore, entertain no jealousy of him, 
and thought no more of detracting from his fame than of carping 
at the great men who had been lying a hundred years in Poets' 
Corner. Even the inmates of Grub Street, even the heroes of the 
Dunciad, were for once just to. living merit. There can be no 
stronger illustration of the estimation in which Congreve was held 
than the fact that the English Iliad, a work which appeared with 
more splendid auspices than any other in our language, was dedi- 
cated to him. There was not a duke in the kingdom who would 
not have been proud of such a compliment. Dr. Johnson ex- 
presses great admiration for the independence of spirit which 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 667 

Pope showed on this occasion. " He passed over peers and states- 
men to inscribe his Iliad to Congreve, with a magnanimity of 
which the praise had been complete, had his friend's virtue been 
equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so great an honour, it is 
not now possible to know." It is certainly impossible to know ; 
yet we think it is possible to guess. The translation of the Iliad 
had been zealously befriended by men of all political opinions. 
The poet who, at an early age, had been raised to affluence by the 
emulous liberality of Whigs and Tories, could not with propriety 
inscribe to a chief of either party a work which had been munifi- 
cently patronised by both. It was necessary to find some person 
who was at once eminent and neutral. It was therefore necessary 
to pass over peers and statesmen. Congreve had a high name in 
letters. He had a high name in aristocratic circles. He lived on 
terms of civility with men of all parties. By a courtesy paid to 
him, neither the ministers nor the leaders of the opposition could 
be offended. 

The singular affectation which had from the first been charac- 
teristic of Congreve grew stronger and stronger as he advanced in 
life. At last it became disagreeable to him to hear his own come- 
dies praised. Voltaire, whose soul was burnt up by the raging 
desire for literary renown, was half puzzled and half disgusted by 
what he saw, during his visit to England, of this extraordinary 
whim. Congreve disclaimed the character of a poet, declared 
that his plays were trifles produced in an idle hour, and begged 
that Voltaire would consider him merely as a gentleman. " If 
you had been merely a gentleman," said Voltaire, " I should not 
have come to see you." 

Congreve was not a man of warm affections. Domestic ties he 
had none ; and in the temporary connections which he formed 
with a succession of beauties from the green-room his heart does 
not appear to have been interested. Of all his attachments that 
to Mrs. Bracegirdle lasted the longest and was the most celebrated. 
This charming actress, who was, during many years, the idol of all 
London, whose face caused the fatal broil in which Mountfort fell. 



668 TLTO MAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY. 

and for which Lord Mohun was tried by the Peers, and to whom 
the Earl of Scarsdale was said to have made honourable addresses, 
had conducted herself, in very trying circumstances, with extraor- 
dinary discretion. Congreve at length became her confidential 
friend. They constantly rode out together and dined together. 
Some people said that she was his mistress, and others that she 
would soon be his wife. He was at last drawn away from her by 
the influence of a wealthier and haughtier beauty. Henrietta, 
daughter of the great Marlborough, and Countess of Godolphin, 
had, on her father's death, succeeded to his dukedom, and to the 
greater part of his immense property. Her husband was an insig- 
nificant man, of whom Lord Chesterfield said that he came to the 
House of Peers only to sleep, and that he might as well sleep on 
the right as on the left of the woolsack. Between the Duchess 
and Congreve sprang up a most eccentric friendship. He had a 
seat every day at her table, and assisted in the direction of her 
concerts. That malignant old beldame, the Dowager Duchess 
Sarah, who had quarrelled with her daughter as she had quarrelled 
with everybody else, affected to suspect that there was something 
wrong. But the world in general appears to have thought that a 
great lady might, without any imputation on her character, pay 
marked attention to a man of eminent genius who was near sixty 
years old, who was still older in appearance and in constitution, 
who was confined to his chair by gout, and who was unable to read 
from blindness. 

In the summer of 1728, Congreve was ordered to try the Bath 
waters. During his excursion he was overturned in his chariot, 
and received some severe internal injury from which he never re- 
covered. He came back to London in a dangerous state, com- 
plained constantly of a pain in his side and continued to sink, till 
in the following January he expired. 

He left ten thousand pounds, saved out of the emoluments of 
his lucrative places. Johnson says that this money ought to have 
gone to the Congreve family, which was then in great distress. 
Doctor Young and Mr. Leigh Hunt, two gentlemen who seldom 



CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS. 669 

agree with each other, but with whom, on this occasion, we are 
happy to agree, think that it ought to have gone to Mrs. Bracegirdle. 
Congreve bequeathed two hundred pounds to Mrs. Bracegirdle, 
and an equal sum to a certain Mrs. Jellat ; but the bulk of his ac- 
cumulations went to the Duchess of Marlborough, in whose im- 
mense wealth such a legacy was as a drop in the bucket. It 
might have raised the fallen fortunes of a Staffordshire squire ; it 
might have enabled a retired actress to enjoy every comfort, and, 
in her sense, every luxury. But it was hardly sufficient to defray 
the Duchess's establishment for three months. 

The great lady buried her friend with a pomp seldom seen at 
the funeral of poets. The corpse lay in state under the ancient 
roof of the Jerusalem Chamber, and was interred in Westminster 
Abbey. The pall was borne by the Duke of Bridgewater, Lord 
Cobham, the Earl of Wilmington, who had been Speaker, and was 
afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, and other men of high con- 
sideration. Her Grace laid out her friend's bequest in a superb 
diamond necklace, which she wore in honour of him, and, if report 
is to be believed, showed her regard in ways much more extraor- 
dinary. It is said that a statue of him in ivory, which moved by 
clockwork, was placed daily at her table, that she had a wax doll 
made in imitation of him, and that the feet of the doll were regu- 
larly blistered and anointed by the doctors, as poor Congreve's feet 
had been when he suffered from the gout. A monument was erected 
to the poet in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription written by 
the Duchess ; and Lord Cobham honoured him with a cenotaph, 
which seems to us, though that is a bold word, the ugliest and 
most absurd of the buildings at Stowe. 

We have said that Wycherley was a worse Congreve. There 
was, indeed, a remarkable analogy between the writings and lives 
of these two men. Both were gentlemen liberally educated. Both 
led town lives, and knew human nature only as it appears between 
Hyde Park and the Tower. Both were men of wit. Neither had 
much imagination. Both at an early age produced lively and 
profligate comedies. Both retired from the field while still in early 



670 THOMAS BASING TON MACAUIAY. 

manhood, and owed to their youthful achievements in literature 
whatever consideration they enjoyed in later life. Both, after they 
had ceased to write for the stage, published volumes of miscella- 
nies which did little credit either to their talents or to their morals. 
Both, during their declining years, hung loose upon society ; and 
both, in their last moments, made eccentric and unjustifiable dis- 
positions of their estates. 

But in every point Congreve maintained his superiority to Wych- 
erley. Wycherley had wit ; but the wit of Congreve far outshines 
that of every comic writer, except Sheridan, who has arisen within 
the last two centuries. Congreve had not, in a large measure, the 
poetical faculty ; but compared with Wycherley he might be called 
a great poet. Wycherley had some knowledge of books ; but 
Congreve was a man of real learning. Congreve's offences against 
decorum, though highly culpable, were not so gross as those of 
Wycherley ; nor did Congreve, like Wycherley, exhibit to the 
world the deplorable spectacle of a licentious dotage. Congreve 
died in the enjoyment of high consideration ; Wycherley forgotten 
or despised. Congreve's will was absurd and capricious ; but 
Wycherley's last actions appear to have been prompted by obdu- 
rate malignity. 

Here, at least for the present, we must stop. Vanbrugh and 
Farquhar are not men to be hastily dismissed, and we have not 
left ourselves space to do them justice. 



XXXIII. 

THOMAS CARLYLE. 

(1795-1881.) 

1. CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
Biography. 1 

[Written in 1832.] 

Man's sociality of nature evinces itself, in spite of all that can 
be said, with abundant evidence by this one fact, were there no 
other : the unspeakable delight he takes in Biography. It is 
written, "The proper study of mankind is man" ; to which study, 
let us candidly admit, he, by true or by false methods, applies, 
himself, nothing loath. " Man is perennially interesting to man ; 
nay, if we look strictly to it, there is nothing else interesting." 
How inexpressibly comfortable to know our fellow-creature; to 
see into him, understand his goings forth, decipher the whole 
heart of his mystery : nay, not only to see into him, but even to 
see out of him, to view the world altogether as he views it ; so 
that we can theoretically construe him, and could almost practi- 
cally personate him ; and do now thoroughly discern both what 
manner of man he is, and what manner of thing he has got to 
work on and live on ! 

A scientific interest and a poetic one alike inspire us in this 
manner. A scientific : because every mortal has a Problem of 
Existence set before him, which, were it only, what for the most 

1 From Fraser's Magazine for April, 1832. First essay on BoswelPs Life of 
Johnson. 

671 



672 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

it is, the Problem of keeping soul and body together, must be to a 
certain extent original, unlike every other ; and yet, at the same 
time, so like every other ; like our own, therefore : instructive, 
moreover, since we also are indentured to live. A poetic interest 
still more ; for precisely this same struggle of human Free-will 
against material Necessity, which every man's Life, by the mere 
circumstance that the man continues alive, will more or less vic- 
toriously exhibit, — is that which above all else, or rather inclusive 
of all else, calls the Sympathy of mortal hearts into action ; and 
whether as acted, or as represented and written of, not only is 
Poetry, but is the sole Poetry possible. Borne onwards by which 
two all-embracing interests, may the earnest Lover of Biography 
expand himself on all sides, and indefinitely enrich himself. 
Looking with the eyes of every new neighbour, he can discern a 
new world different from each : feeling with the heart of every- 
neighbour, he lives with every neighbour's life, even as with his own. 
Of these millions of living men each individual is a mirror to us : 
a mirror both scientific and poetic ; or, if you will, both natural 
and magical ; — from which one would so gladly draw aside the 
gauze veil ; and, peering therein, discern the image of his own 
natural face, and the supernatural secrets that prophetically lie 
under the same ! 

Observe, accordingly, to what extent, in the actual course of 
things, this business of biography is practised and relished. De- 
fine to thyself, judicious Reader, the real significance of these 
phenomena, named Gossip, Egotism, Personal Narrative, (miracu- 
lous or not,) Scandal, Raillery, Slander, and such like; the sum- 
total of which (with some fractional addition of a better ingredient, 
generally too small to be noticeable) constitutes that other grand 
phenomenon still called " Conversation." Do they not mean 
wholly : Biography and Autobiography ? Not only in the com- 
mon Speech of men ; but in all Art, too, which is or should be 
the concentrated and conserved essence of what men can speak 
and show, Biography is almost the one thing needful. 

Even in the highest works of Art our interest, as the critics 



CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 673 

complain, is too apt to be strongly or even mainly of a Biographic 
sort. In the Art, we can nowise forget the Artist : while looking 
on the Transfiguration, while studying the Iliad, we ever strive to 
figure to ourselves what spirit dwelt in Raphael ; what a head was 
that of Homer, wherein, woven of Elysian light and Tartarean 
gloom, that old world fashioned itself together, of which these 
written Greek characters are but a feeble though perennial copy. 
The Painter and the Singer are present to us ; we partially and for 
the time become the very Painter and the very Singer, while we 
enjoy the Picture and the Song. Perhaps, too, let the critic say 
what he will, this is the highest enjoyment, the clearest recognition, 
we can have of these. Art indeed is Art ; yet Man also is Man. 
Had the Transfiguration been painted without human hand, had 
it grown merely on the canvas, say by atmospheric influences, as 
lichen-pictures do on rocks, — it were a grand Picture doubtless; 
yet nothing like so grand as the Picture, which, on opening our 
eyes, we everywhere in Heaven and in Earth see painted ; and 
everywhere pass over with indifference, — because the painter was 
not a Man. Think of this; much lies in it. The Vatican is 
great; yet poor to Chimborazo or the Peak of Teneriffe ; its 
dome is but a foolish Big-endian or Little-endian chip of an egg- 
shell, compared with that star-fretted Dome where Arcturus and 
Orion glance forever; which latter, notwithstanding, who looks 
at, save perhaps some necessitous star-gazer bent to make Alma- 
nacs, some thick-quilted watchman, to see what weather it will 
prove ? The Biographic interest is wanting : no Michael Angelo 
was He who built that "Temple of Immensity" ; therefore do we, 
pitiful Littlenesses as we are, turn rather to wonder and to wor- 
ship in the little toy-box of a Temple built by our like. 

Still more decisively, still more exclusively does the Biographic 
interest manifest itself, as we descend into lower regions of 
spiritual communication; through the whole range of what is 
called Literature. Of History, for example, the most honoured, 
if not honourable species of composition, is not the whole pur- 
port biographic? " History," it has been said, " is the essence of 



674 THOMAS CARLYLR. 

innumerable Biographies." Such, at least, it should be : whether 
it is, might admit of question. But, in any case, what hope have 
we in turning over these old interminable Chronicles, with their 
garrulities and insipidities ; or still worse, in patiently examining 
those modern Narrations, of the Philosophic kind, where "Phi- 
losophy, teaching by Experience," has to sit like owl on house- 
top, seeing nothing, understanding nothing, uttering only, with sol- 
emnity enough, her perpetual most wearisome hoo-hoo : — what 
hope have we, except the for most part fallacious one of gaining 
some acquaintance with our fellow- creatures, though dead and 
vanished, yet dear to us ; how they got along in those old days, 
suffering and doing; to what extent, and under what circum- 
stances, they resisted the Devil and triumphed over him, or 
struck their colours to him, and were trodden under foot by him ; 
how, in short, the perennial Battle went, which men name Life, 
which we also in these new days, with indifferent fortune, have 
to fight, and must bequeath to our sons and grandsons to go on 
fighting, — till the Enemy one day be quite vanished and abolished, 
or else the great Night sink and part the combatants ; and thus, 
either by some Millennium or some new Noah's Deluge, the 
volume of Universal History wind itself up ! Other hope, in 
studying such Books, we have none : and that it is a deceitful 
hope, who that has tried knows not? A feast of widest Bio- 
graphic insight is spread for us ; we enter full of hungry anticipa- 
tion : alas ! like so many other feasts, which life invites us to, a 
mere Ossian's " feast of shells," — the food and liquor being all 
emptied out and clean gone, and only the vacant dishes and de- 
ceitful emblems thereof left ! Your modern Historical Restaura- 
teurs are indeed little better than high-priests of Famine ; that 
keep choicest china dinner-sets, only no dinner to serve therein. 
Yet such is our Biographical appetite, we run trying from shop to 
shop, with ever new hope ; and, unless we could set the wind, 
with ever new disappointment. 

Again, consider the whole class of Fictitious Narratives ; from 
the highest category of epic or dramatic Poetry in Shakspeare and 



CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 675 

Homer, down to the lowest of froth Prose in the Fashionable 
Novel. What are all these but so many mimic Biographies? 
Attempts, here by an inspired Speaker, there by an uninspired 
Babbler, to deliver himself, more or less ineffectually, of the grand 
secret wherewith all hearts labour oppressed : The significance 
of Man's Life ; — which deliverance, even as traced in the un- 
furnished head, and printed at the Minerva Press, finds readers. 
For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a superlative in 
every kind ; and tht most Foolish man in the Earth is now in- 
dubitably living and breathing, and did this morning or lately eat 
breakfast, and is even now digesting the same ; and looks out on the 
world with his dim horn- eyes, and inwardly forms some unspeak- 
able theory thereof : yet where shall the authentically Existing be 
personally met with ! Can one of us, otherwise than by guess, 
know that we have got sight of him, have orally communed with 
him? To take even the narrower sphere of this our English 
Metropolis, can any one confidently say to himself, that he has 
conversed with the identical, individual Stupidest man now extant 
in London? No one. Deep as we dive in the Profound, there 
is ever a new depth opens : where the ultimate bottom may lie, 
through what new scenes of being we must pass before reach- 
ing it (except that we know it does lie somewhere, and might 
by human faculty and opportunity be reached), is altogether a 
mystery to us. Strange, tantalizing pursuit ! We have the fullest 
assurance, not only that there is a Stupidest of London men 
actually resident, with bed and board of some kind, in London ; 
but that several persons have been or perhaps are now speaking 
face to face with him : while for us, chase it as we may, such 
scientific blessedness will too probably be for ever denied ! — But 
the thing we meant to enforce was this comfortable fact, that no 
known Head was so wooden, but there might be other heads to 
which it were a genius and Friar Bacon's Oracle. Of no given 
Book, not even of a Fashionable Novel, can you predicate with 
certainty that its vacuity is absolute ; that there are not other 
vacuities which shall partially replenish themselves therefrom, and 



676 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

esteem it a plenum. How knowest thou, may the distressed Nov- 
elwright exclaim, that I, here where I sit, am the Foolishest of 
existing mortals ; that this my Long-ear of a Fictitious Biography 
shall not find one and the other, into whose still longer ears it 
may be the means, under Providence, of instilling somewhat? 
We answer, None knows, none can certainly know : therefore, write 
on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, as it has been given thee. 

Here, however, in regard to " Fictitious Biographies," and 
much other matter of like sort, which the greener mind in these 
days inditeth, we may as well insert some singular sentences on the 
importance and significance of Reality, as they stand written for 
us in Professor Gottfried Sauerteig's sEsthetische Springwurzeln : 2 
a Work, perhaps, as yet new to most English readers. The Profes- 
sor and Doctor is not a man whom we can praise without reser- 
vation ; neither shall we say that his Springwurzeln (a sort of 
magical pick-locks, as he affectedly names them) are adequate 
to " start " every bolt that locks up an aesthetic mystery ;• never- 
theless, in his crabbed, one-sided way, he sometimes hits masses 
of the truth. We endeavour to translate faithfully, and trust the 
reader will find it worth serious perusal : 

"The significance, even for poetic purposes," says Sauerteig, 
" that lies in Reality, is too apt to escape us ; is perhaps only now 
beginning to be discerned. When we named Rousseau's Confes- 
sions an elegiaco-didactic Poem, we meant more than an empty 
figure of speech ; we meant an historical scientific fact. 

" Fiction, while the feigner of it knows that he is feigning, par- 
takes, more than we suspect, of the nature of lying ; and has ever 
an, in some degree, unsatisfactory character. All Mythologies 
were once Philosophies; were believed: the Epic Poems of old 
time, so long as they continued epie, and had any complete im- 
pressiveness, were Histories, and understood to be narratives of 
facts. In so far as Homer employed his gods as mere orna- 
mental fringes, and had not himself, or at least did not expect his 
hearers to have, a belief that they were real agents in those antique 

2 (esthetic primitive roots. 



CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 677 

doings ; so far did he fail to be genuine ; so far was he a partially 
hollow and false cringer ; and sang to please only a portion of 
man's mind, not the whole thereof. 

" Imagination is, after all, but a poor matter when it must part 
company with Understanding, and even front it hostilely in flat 
contradiction. Our mind is divided in twain : there is contest ; 
wherein that which is weaker must needs come to the worse. Now 
of all feelings, states, principles, call it what you will, in man's mind, 
is not Belief the clearest, strongest ; against which all others con- 
tend in vain ? Belief is, indeed, the beginning and first condition 
of all spiritual Force whatsoever : only in so far as Imagination, 
were it but momentarily, is believed, can there be any use or mean- 
ing in it, any enjoyment of it. And what is momentary Belief? 
The enjoyment of a moment. Whereas a perennial Belief were 
enjoyment perennially, and with the whole united soul. 

" It is thus that I judge of the Supernatural in an Epic Poem ; 
and would say, the instant it had ceased to be authentically super- 
natural, and become what you call Machinery ; sweep it out of 
sight (schaff es mi?- vom Halse '■') ! Of a truth, that same ' Machin- 
ery,' about which the critics make such hubbub, was well named 
Machinery ; for it is in very deed mechanical, nowise inspired or 
poetical. Neither for us is there the smallest aesthetic enjoyment 
in it ; save only in this way : that we believe it to have been believed, 
— by the Singer or his Hearers ; into whose case we now laboriously 
struggle to transport ourselves ; and so, with stinted enough result, 
catch some reflex of the Reality, which for them was wholly real, 
and visible face to face. Whenever it has come so far that your 
' Machinery ' is avowedly mechanical and unbelieved, — what is it 
else, if we dare tell ourselves the truth, but a miserable meaning- 
less Deception kept-up by old use and wont alone ? If the gods 
of an Iliad are to us no longer authentic Shapes of Terror, heart- 
stirring, heart-appalling, but only vague glittering Shadows, — what 
must the dead Pagan gods of an Epigoniad be, the dead living 
Pagan -Christian gods of a Lusiad, the concrete-abstract, evangeli- 
3 put it off my neck. 



67S THOMAS CARLYLE. 

cal- metaphysical gods of a Paradise Lost? Superannuated lum- 
ber ! Cast raiment, at best ; in which some poor mime, strutting 
and swaggering, may or may not set forth new noble Human Feel- 
ings (again a Reality), and so secure, or not secure, our pardon 
of such hoydenish making, — for which, in any case, he has a 
pardon to ask. 

" True enough, none but the earliest Epic Poems can claim this 
distinction of entire credibility, of Reality : after an Iliad, a Shas- 
ter, a Koran, and other the like primitive performances, the rest 
seem, by this rule of mine, to be altogether excluded from the list. 
Accordingly, what are all the rest, from Virgil's /Eneid downwards, 
in comparison ? Frosty, artificial, heterogeneous things ; more of 
gumflowers than of roses ; at best, of the two mixed incoherently 
together : to some of which, indeed, it were hard to deny the title 
of Poems ; yet to no one of which can that title belong in any sense 
even resembling the old high one it, in those old days, conveyed, 
— when the epithet ' divine ' or l sacred ' as applied to the uttered 
Word of man, was not a vain metaphor, a vain sound, but a real 
name with meaning. Thus, too, the farther we recede from those 
early days, when Poetry, as true Poetry is always, was still sacred 
or divine, and inspired (what ours, in great part, only pretends to 
be), — the more impossible becomes it to produce any, we say not 
true Poetry, but tolerable semblance of such; the hollower, in 
particular, grow all manner of Epics ; till at length, as in this gen- 
eration, the very name of Epic sets men a-yawning, the announce- 
ment of a new Epic is received as a public calamity. 

" But what if the impossible being once for all quite discarded, 
the probable be well adhered to ; how stands it with fiction then ? 
Why, then, I would say, the evil is much mended, but nowise com- 
pletely cured. We have then, in place of the wholly dead modern 
Epic, the partially living modern Novel ; to which latter it is much 
easier to lend that above-mentioned, so essential ' momentary cre- 
dence,' than to the former : indeed infinitely easier : for the 
former being flatly incredible, no mortal can for a moment credit 
it, for a moment enjoy it. Thus, here and there, a Tom yones, 



CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 679 

a Meister, a Crusoe, will yield no little solacement to the minds of 
men : though still immeasurably less than a Reality would, were 
the significance thereof as impressively unfolded, were the genius 
that could so unfold it once given us by the kind Heavens. Neither 
say thou that proper Realities are wanting : for Man's Life, now 
as of old, is the genuine work of God ; wherever there is a Man, a 
God also is revealed, and all that is God-like : a whole epitome of 
the Infinite, with its meanings, lies enfolded in the Life of every 
Man. Only, alas, that the Seer to discern this same God-like, and 
with fit utterance //vzfold it for us, is wanting, and may long be 
wanting ! 

" Nay, a question arises on us here, wherein the whole German 
reading- world will eagerly join : Whether man can any longer be 
so interested in the spoken Word, as he often was in those pro- 
vincial days, when, rapt away by its inscrutable power, he pro- 
nounced it, in such dialect as he had, to be transcendental, (to 
transcend all measure,) to be sacred, prophetic, and the inspira- 
tion of a God? For myself, I (ic/i meines Ortes,) A by faith or by 
insight, do heartily understand that the answer to such question 
will be, Yea ! For never, that I could in searching find out, has Man 
been, by Time which devours so much, deprivated of any faculty 
whatsoever that he in any era was possessed of. To my seeming, 
the babe born yesterday has all the organs of Body, Soul, and 
Spirit, and in exactly the same combination and entireness, that 
the oldest Pelasgic Greek, or Mesopotamian Patriarch, or Father 
Adam himself could boast of. Ten fingers, one heart with venous 
and arterial blood therein, still belong to man that is born of 
woman : when did he lose any of his spiritual Endowments either : 
above all, his highest spiritual Endowment, that of revealing 
Poetic Beauty, and of adequately receiving the same? Not the 
material, not the susceptibility is wanting ; only the Poet, or long 
series of Poets, to work on these. True, alas too true, the Poet 
is still utterly wanting, or all but utterly : nevertheless have we 
not centuries enough before us to produce him in? Him and 

4 as for me, lit., I in my place. 



680 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

much else ! — I, for the present, will but predict that chiefly by 
working more and more on Reality, and evolving more and more 
wisely its inexhaustible meanings ; and, in brief, speaking forth 
in fit utterance whatsoever our whole soul believes, and ceasing to 
speak forth what things soever our whole soul does not believe, — 
will this high emprise be accomplished, or approximated to." 

These notable, and not unfounded, though partial and deefi-see- 
ing rather than w/V/^-seeing observations on the great import of 
Reality, considered even as a poetic material, we have inserted 
the more willingly because a transient feeling to the same purpose 
may often have suggested itself to many readers; arid on the 
whole, it is good that every reader and every writer understand, 
with all intensity of conviction, what quite infinite worth lies in 
Truth ; how all-pervading, omnipotent, in man's mind, is the thing 
we name Belief. For the rest, Herr Sauerteig, though one-sided, 
on this matter of Reality, seems heartily persuaded, and is not 
perhaps so ignorant as he looks. It cannot be unknown to him, 
for example, what noise is made about " Invention " ; what a 
supreme rank this faculty is reckoned to hold in the poetic endow- 
ment. Great truly is Invention ; nevertheless, that is but a poor 
exercise of it with which Belief is not concerned. " An Irishman 
with whiskey in his head," as poor Byron said, will invent you, in 
this kind, till there is enough, and to spare. Nay, perhaps, if we 
consider well, the highest exercise of Invention has, in very deed, 
nothing to do with Fiction ; but is an invention of new Truth, what 
we can call a Revelation ; which last does undoubtedly transcend 
all other poetic efforts, nor can Herr Sauerteig be too loud in its 
praises. But, on the other hand, whether such effort is still possi- 
ble for man, Herr Sauerteig and the bulk of the world are proba- 
bly at issue, — and will probably continue so till that same " Reve- 
lation," or new " Invention of Reality," of the sort he desiderates, 
shall itself make its appearance. 

Meanwhile, quitting these airy regions, let any one bethink him 
how impressive the smallest historical fact may become, as con- 
trasted with the grandest fictitious event; what an incalculable force 



CRITICAL AMD MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 681 

lies for us in this consideration : The Thing which I here hold 
imaged in my mind did actually occur; was, in very truth, an 
element in the system of the All, whereof I too form part ; had 
therefore, and has, through all time, an authentic being ; is not a 
dream, but a reality ! We ourselves can remember reading, in 
Lord Clarendon? with feelings perhaps somehow accidentally 
opened to it, — certainly with a depth of impression strange to 
us then and now, — that insignificant-looking passage, where 
Charles, after the battle of Worcester, glides down, with Squire 
Careless, from the Royal Oak, at night-fall, being hungry : how 
" making a shift to get over hedges and ditches, after walking at 
least eight or nine miles, which were the most grievous to the King 
by the weight of his boots (for he could not put them off, when he 
cut off his hair, for want of shoes), before morning they came to 
a poor cottage, the owner whereof, being a Roman Catholic, was 
known to Careless." How this poor drudge, being knocked up 
from his snoring, " carried them into a little barn full of hay, which 
was a better lodging than he had for himself"; and by and by, 
not without difficulty, brought his Majesty " a piece of bread and a 
great pot of butter-milk," saying candidly that " he himself lived by 
his daily labour, and that what he had brought him was the fare 
he and his wife had " : on which nourishing diet his Majesty, 
" staying upon the haymow," feeds thankfully for two days ; and 
then departs, under new guidance, having first changed clothes 
down to the very shirt and " old pair of shoes," with his landlord ; 
and so as worthy Bunyan has it, " goes on his way, and sees him 
no more." Singular enough if we will think of it ! This then was 
a genuine flesh-and-blood Rustic of the year 1651 : he did actually 
swallow bread and butter-milk (not having ale and bacon) , and do 
field-labour ; with these hob-nailed " shoes " has sprawled through 
mud-roads in winter, and, jocund or not, driven his team a-field in 
summer ; he made bargains ; had chafferings and higglings, now a 
sore heart, now a glad one ; was born ; was a son, was a father ; 
— toiled in many ways, being forced to it, till the strength was all 

5 History of the Rebellion, III. 625. 



6S2 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

worn out of him : and then lay down " to rest his galled back," 
and sleep there till the long-distant morning ! — How comes it, 
that he alone of all the British rustics who tilled and lived with 
him, on whom the blessed sun on that same " fifth day of Septem- 
ber " was shining, should have chanced to rise on us ; that this 
poor pair of clouted Shoes, out of the million million hides that have 
been tanned, and cut, and worn, should still subsist, and hang visi- 
bly together? We see him but for a moment; for one moment, 
the blanket of the Night is rent asunder, so that we behold and 
see, and then closes over him for ever. 

So, too, in some BosweWs Life of Johnson, how indelible, and 
magically bright does many a little Reality dwell in our remem- 
brance ! There is no need that the personages on the scene be 
a King and Clown ; that the scene be the Forest of the Royal 
Oak, " on the borders of Staffordshire " : need only that the scene 
lie on this old firm Earth of ours, where we also have so surpris- 
ingly arrived ; that the personages be men, and seen with the eyes 
of a man. Foolish enough, how some slight, perhaps mean and 
even ugly incident — if real, and well presented, will fix itself in a 
susceptive memory, and lie ennobled there ; silvered over with the 
pale cast of thought, with the pathos which belongs only to the 
Dead. For the Past is all holy to us ; the Dead are all holy, even 
they that were base and wicked while alive. Their baseness and 
wickedness was not They, was but the heavy unmanageable Envi- 
ronment that lay round them, with which they fought unprevailing : 
they (the ethereal God-given Force that dwelt in them, and was 
their Self) have now shuffled off that heavy Environment, and are 
free and pure : their life-long Battle, go how it might, is all ended, 
with many wounds or with fewer ; they have been recalled from it, 
and the once harsh-jawing battle-field has become a silent awe- 
inspiring Golgotha, and Gottesacker (Field of God) ! — Boswell 
relates this in itself smallest and poorest of occurrences : " As we 
walked along the Strand to-night, arm in arm, a woman of the town 
accosted us in the usual enticing manner. ' No, no, my girl,' said 
Johnson ; ( it won't do.' He, however, did not treat her with harsh- 



CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 6S3 

ness, and we talked of the wretched life of such women." Strange 
power of Reality ! Not even this poorest of occurrences, but now, 
after seventy years are come and gone, has a meaning for us. Do 
but consider that it is true ; that it did in very deed occur ! That 
unhappy Outcast, with all her sins and woes, her lawless de- 
sires, too complex mischances, her wailings and her riotings, has 
departed utterly : alas ! her siren finery has got all besmutched ; 
ground, generations since, into dust and smoke ; of her degraded 
body, and whole miserable earthly existence, all is away ! she is no 
longer here, but far from us, in the bosom of Eternity, — whence 
we too came, whither we too are bound ! Johnson said, " No, no, 
my girl ; it won't do " ; and then " we talked " ; — and herewith 
the wretched one, seen but for the twinkling of an eye, passes on 
into the utter Darkness. No high Calista, 6 that ever issued from 
Story-teller's brain, will impress us more deeply than this meanest 
of the mean ; and for a good reason : That she issued from the 
Maker of Men. 

It is well worth the Artist's while to examine for himself what it 
is that gives such pitiful incidents their memorableness ; his aim 
likewise is, above all things, to be memorable. Half the effect, we 
already perceive, depends on the object, on its being real, on its 
being really seen. The other half will depend on the observer ; 
and the question now is : " How are real objects to be so seen ; on 
what quality of observing, or of style in describing, does this so 
intense pictorial power depend?" Often a slight circumstance 
contributes curiously to the result : some little, and perhaps to 
appearance accidental, feature is presented ; a light gleam, which 
instantaneously excites the mind, and urges it to complete the pic- 
ture, and evolve the meaning thereof for itself. By critics, such 
light gleams and their almost magical influence have frequently 
been noted : but the power to produce such, to select such features 
as will produce them, is generally treated as a knack, or trick of the 
trade, a secret for being " graphic " ; whereas these magical feats 
are, in truth, rather inspirations ; and the gift of performing them, 
c "A celebrated character in Rowe's Fair Penitent.' 1 '' — Wheeler. 



684 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

which acts unconsciously, without forethought, and as if by nature 
alone, is properly a genius for description. 

One grand, invaluable secret there is, however, which includes all 
the rest, and, what is comfortable, lies clearly in every man's power : 
To have an open, loving heart, and what follows from the possession 
of such ! Truly it has been said, emphatically in these days ought 
it to be repeated : A loving Heart is the beginning of all Knowl- 
edge. This it is that opens the whole mind, quickens every faculty 
of the intellect to do its fit work, that of knowing; and therefrom, 
by sure consequence, of vividly uttering forth. Other secret for 
being "graphic" is there none, worth having: but this is an all- 
sufficient one. See, for example, what a small Boswell can do ! 
Hereby, indeed, is the whole man made a living mirror, wherein 
the wonders of this ever-wonderful Universe are, in their true light 
(which is ever a magical, miraculous one) represented, and re- 
flected back on us. It has been said, " the heart sees farther than 
the head " : but, indeed, without the seeing heart there is no true 
seeing for the head so much as possible ; all is mere oversight, 
hallucination and vain superficial phantasmagoria, which can per- 
manently profit no one. 

Here, too, may we not pause for an instant, and make a prac- 
tical reflection ? Considering the multitude of mortals that handle 
the Pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without 
glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises : How 
is it, then, that no Work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp 
of authenticity and permanence ; of worth for more than one day ? 
Ship-loads of Fashionable Novels, Sentimental Rhymes, Tragedies, 
Farces, Diaries of Travel, Tales by flood and field, are swallowed 
monthly into the bottomless Pool ; still does the Press toil : innu- 
merable Paper-makers, Compositors, Printers' Devils, Bookbinders, 
and Hawkers grown hoarse with loud proclaiming, rest not from 
their labour; and still, in torrents, rushes on the great array of 
Publications, unpausing, to their final home; and still Oblivion, 
like the Grave, cries : Give ! Give ! How is it that of all these 
countless multitudes, no one can attain to the smallest mark 






CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 685 

of excellence, or produce aught that shall endure longer than 
"snow-flake on the river," or the foam of penny-beer? We 
answer : Because they are foam ; because there is no Reality in 
them. These Three Thousand men, women, and Children, that 
make up the army of British Authors, do not, if we will well con- 
sider it, see anything whatever ; consequently have nothing that 
they can record and utter, only more or fewer things that they can 
plausibly pretend to record. The Universe, of Man and Nature, 
is still quite shut-up from them ; the " open secret " still utterly a 
secret j because no sympathy with Man or Nature, no love and 
free simplicity of heart has yet unfolded the same. Nothing but 
a pitiful Image of their own pitiful Self, with its vanities, and 
grudgings, and ravenous hunger of all kinds, hangs forever painted 
in the retina of these unfortunate persons : so that the starry all, 
with whatsoever it embraces, does but appear as some expanded 
magic-lantern shadow of that same Image, — and naturally looks 
pitiful enough. 

It is vain for these persons to allege that they are naturally 
without gift, naturally stupid and sightless, and so can attain to no 
knowledge of anything ; therefore, in writing of anything, must 
needs write falsehoods of it, there being in it no truth for them. 
Not so, good Friends. The stupidest of you has a certain fac- 
ulty; were it but that of articulate speech (say in the Scottish, 
the Irish, the Cockney dialect, or even in "Governess-English "), 
and of physically discerning what lies under your nose. The 
stupidest of you would perhaps grudge to be compared in fac- 
ulty with James Boswell ; yet see what he has produced ! You 
do not use your faculty honestly j your heart is shut up ; full of 
greediness, malice, discontent ; so your intellectual sense cannot 
be open. It is vain also to urge that James Boswell had oppor- 
tunities ; saw great men and great things, such as you can never 
hope to look on. What make ye of Parson White in Selborne? 
He had not only no great men to look on, but not even men ; 
merely sparrows and cock-chafers : yet has he left us a Biography 
of these ; which, under its title Natural History of Selborne, still 



686 THOMAS CARLYT.E. 

remains valuable to us ; which has copied a little sentence or two 
faithfully from the inspired volume of Nature, and so is itself not 
without inspiration. Go ye and do likewise. Sweep away utterly 
all frothiness and falsehood from your heart ; struggle unweariedly 
to acquire, what is possible for every God-created Man, a free, 
open, humble soul : speak not at all, in any wise, till you have 
somewhat to speak ; care not for the reward of your speaking, but 
simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking : 
then be placed in what section of Space and of Time soever, do 
but open your eyes, and they shall actually see, and bring you 
real knowledge, wondrous, worthy of belief ; and instead of one 
Boswell and one White, the world will rejoice in a thousand, — 
stationed on their thousand several watch-towers, to instruct us by 
indubitable documents, of whatsoever in our so stupendous World 
comes to light and is ! O, had the Editor of this Magazine but a 
magic rod to turn all that not inconsiderable Intellect, which now 
deluges us with artificial soap-lather, and mere Lying, into the 
faithful study of Reality, — what knowledge of great, everlasting 
Nature, of Man's ways and doings therein, would not every year 
bring us in ! Can we but change one single soap-latherer and 
mountebank Juggler into a true Thinker and Doer, who even tries 
honestly to think and do — great will be our reward. 

But to return; or rather from this point to begin our journey ! 
If now, what with Herr Sauerteig's Springwurzeln, what with so 
much lucubration of our own, it have become apparent how deep, 
immeasurable is the " worth that lies in Reality" and farther, 
how exclusive the interest which man takes in the Histories of 
Man, — may it not seem lamentable, that so few genuinely good 
Biographies have yet been accumulated in Literature ; that in the 
whole world, one cannot find, going strictly to work, above some 
dozen or baker's dozen, and those chiefly of very ancient date ? 
Lamentable ; yet after what we have just seen, accountable. An- 
other question might be asked : How comes it that in England 
we have simply one good Biography, this BoswelVs Johnson ; and 
of good, indifferent, or even bad attempts at Biography, fewer 



OtrrrCAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 687 

than any civilized people ? Consider the French and Germans, 
with their Moreris, Bayles, Jordenses, Jochers, their innumerable 
Memoires, and SchilJerungen, and Biographies Universelles ; not 
to speak of Rousseaus, Goethes, Schubarts, Jung-Stillings : and 
then contrast with these our poor Birches and Kippises and 
Pecks, — the whole breed of whom, moreover, is now extinct ! 

With this question, as the answer might lead us far, and come 
out unflattering to patriotic sentiment, we shall not intermeddle ; 
but turn rather, with great pleasure, to the fact, that one excellent 
Biography is actually English ; and even now lies, in Five new Vol- 
umes, at our hand, soliciting a new consideration from us ; such 
as, age after age (the Perennial showing ever new phases as our 
position alters), it may long be profitable to bestow on it; — to 
which task we here, in this age, gladly address ourselves. 

First, however, let the foolish April-fool Day pass by; and 
our Reader, during these twenty-nine days of uncertain weather 
that will follow, keep pondering, according to convenience, the 
purport of Biography in general : then, with the blessed dew of 
May-day, and in unlimited convenience of space, shall all that 
we have written on Johnson, and BosweWs Johnson, and Croker's 
BosweWs Johnson, be faithfully laid before him. 



XXXIII. 

2. HERO-WORSHIP. 

[Written in 1840. J 

The Hero as Poet . . . Shakspeare. 

As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody 
musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our 
Modern Europe, its Inner Life ; so Shakspeare, we may say, em- 
bodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its 
chivalries, courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of 
thinking, acting, looking, at the world, man then had. As in 
Homer we may still construe Old Greece ; so in Shakspeare and 
Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe was, in 
Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us the 
Faith or soul ; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us 
the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have : a man 
was sent for it, the man Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way 
of life had reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking 
down into slow or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, 
this other sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial 
singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring 
record of it. Two fit men : Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire 
of the world ; Shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the 
upper light of the world. Italy produced the one world-voice ; 
we English had the honour of producing the other. 

Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man 
came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self- 
sufficing is this Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not pros- 
ecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as 
688 



HERO-] VORSHTP. 689 

a Poet ! The woods and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford 
there, had been enough for this man ! But indeed that strange 
outbudding of our whole English Existence, which we call the 
Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own accord ? The 
' Tree Igdrasil ' 7 buds and withers by its own laws, — too deep for 
our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and 
leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws ; not a Sir Thomas Lucy 
but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not suffi- 
ciently considered : how everything does cooperate with all ; not a 
leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and 
stellar systems ; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung 
withal out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or 
irrecognisably, on all men ! It is all a Tree : circulation of sap 
and influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with 
the lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest 
portion of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down 
in the Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread 
the highest Heaven ! — 

In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era 
with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which 
had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the 
Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of 
Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakspeare 
was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the 
soul of Practice ; the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark 
here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, 
so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before Shakspeare, 
the noblest product of it, made his appearance.. He did make 
his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with Cathol- 
icism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth ; taking 
small thought of Acts of Parliament. King-Henrys, Queen-Eliza- 

7 In the Norse mythology of the Edda, Yggdrasil is " the ash of destiny, 
biggest and best of all trees, under whose widespread boughs the gods hold 
their doom each day." — Metcalfe, The Englishman and the Scandina- 
vian, p. 242. 



690 THOMAS CARLYI.R. 

beths go their way ; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parlia- 
ment, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they 
make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, on the 
hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into 
being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening subscription- 
lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false 
endeavouring ! This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and 
blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours. 
Priceless Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature ; given altogether 
silently ; — received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of 
little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One 
should look at that side of matters too. 

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes 
hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one ; I 
think the best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe 
at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is 
the chief of all Poets hitherto ; the greatest intellect who, in our 
recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. 
On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty 
of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. 
Such a calmness of depth ; placid joyous strength ; all things imaged 
in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfath- 
omable sea ! It has been said that in the constructing of Shak- 
speare's Dramas there is, apart from all other ' faculties ' as they 
are called, an understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon's 
Novum Organ urn. That is true ; and it is not a truth that strikes 
every one. It would become more apparent if we tried, any of us 
for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic materials, we could 
fashion such a result ! The built house seems all so fit, — every- 
way as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the 
nature of things, — we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was 
shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature her- 
self had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect 
than any other man, we may call Shakspeare in this : he discerns, 
knows as bv instinct, what condition he works under, what his 



HER - 1 VORSHTP. 69 1 

materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is 
not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice ; it is deliberate 
illumination of the whole matter ; it is a calmly seeing eye ; a great 
intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has 
witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and 
delineation he will give of it, — is the best measure you could get 
of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital and 
shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; 
where is the true beginning, the true sequence and ending? To 
find out this you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. 
He must understand the thing ; according to the depth of his 
understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him 
so. Does like join itself to like ; does the spirit of method stir in 
that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the 
man say, Fiat lux, Let there be light ; and out of chaos make a 
world ? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he accomplish 
this. 

Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait- 
painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that 
Shakspeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes out 
decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative 
perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thing he looks at reveals not 
this or that face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic secret : it 
dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the per- 
fect structure of it. Creative, we said : poetic creation, what is 
this too but seeing the thing sufficiently? The word that will 
describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight 
of the thing. And is not Shakspeare's morality, his valour, can- 
dour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and 
greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there 
too ? Great as the world ! No twisted, poor convex-concave 
mirror, reflecting all objects* with its own convexities and con- 
cavities ; a perfectly level mirror ; — that is to say withal, if we 
will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a 
good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes 



692 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

in all kinds of men and objects, a FalstarT, an Othello, a Juliet, 
a Coriolanus ; sets them all forth to us in their round complete- 
ness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. Novum Organum, 
and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary 
order ; earthly, material, poor in comparison with this. Among 
modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same 
rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me 
of it. Of him too you say that he saw the object : you may say 
what he himself says of Shakspeare : ' His characters are like 
watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal : they show you the 
hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.' 

The seeing eye ! It is this that discloses the inner harmony 
of things ; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has 
wrapped-up in these often rough embodiments. Something she 
did mean. To the seeing eye that something were discernible. 
Are they base, miserable things? You can laugh over them, you 
can weep over them \ you can in some way or other genially 
relate yourself to them ? — you can, at lowest, hold your peace 
about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till 
the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing 
them ! At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, 
that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have : a 
Poet in word ; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. 
Whether he write at all ; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, 
will depend on accidents : who knows on what extremely trivial 
accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his 
being taught to sing in his boyhood ! But the faculty which 
enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony 
that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart 
of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of 
habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary 
outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort* soever. To the Poet, as to 
every other, we say first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of 
no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities 
against each other, and name yourself a Poet ; there is no hope 



HER O - WORSHIP. 693 

for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or spec- 
ulation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used 
to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, " But are ye sure he's 
not a dunce ? " Why, really one might ask the same thing, in 
regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function ; and con- 
sider it as the one enquiry needful : Are ye sure he's not a dunce ? 
There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person. 

For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is 
a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's 
faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had in- 
cluded all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of 
faculties as if they were distinct, things separable ; as if a man 
had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c, as he has hands, feet and 
arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's 
' intellectual nature,' and of his ' moral nature,' as if these again 
were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do 
perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance \ we must speak, I am 
aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words ought 
not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension 
of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified thereby. We 
ought to know withal, and to keep for ever in mind, that these 
divisions are at bottom but names ; that man's spiritual nature, 
the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivis- 
ible ; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so 
forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all 
indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related 3 
that if we knew one of them, we might know all of them. Moral- 
ity itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this 
but another side of the one vital Force whereby he is and works ? 
All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how 
a man would fight, by the way in which he sings ; his courage, or 
want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he 
has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is one ; 
and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways. 

Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk : 



694 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

but, consider it, — without morality, intellect were impossible for 
him ; a thoroughly immoral man could not know anything at all ! 
To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first love 
the thing, sympathize with it : that is, be virtuously related to it. 
If he have not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every 
turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, 
how shall he know ? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in 
his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the 
selfish and the pusillanimous for ever a sealed book : what such 
can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small ; for the uses of 
the day merely. — But does not the very Fox know something of 
Nature ? Exactly so : it knows where the geese lodge ! The 
human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world ; what 
more does he know but this and the like of this ? Nay, it should 
be considered too, that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine mo- 
rality, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at 
the geese ! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections 
on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other 
Foxes, and so forth ; and had not courage, promptitude, practi- 
cality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch 
no geese. We may say of the Fox too that his morality and 
insight are of the same dimensions ; different faces of the same 
internal unity of vulpine life ! — These things are worth stating ; 
for the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perver- 
sion, in this time : what limitations, modifications they require, 
your own candour will supply. 

If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, 
I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakspeare's 
intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious 
intellect ; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. 
Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those dramas of his are 
Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great 
truth in this saying. Shakspeare's Art is not Artifice ; the noblest 
worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up 
from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is 



HE R - WORSHIP. 695 

a voice of Nature. The latest generations of men will find new 
meanings in Shakspeare, new elucidations of their own human 
being ; ' new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe : 
concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and 
senses of man.' This well deserves meditating. It is Nature's 
highest reward to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be 
a part of herself . Such a man's works, whatsoever he with utmost 
conscious exertion and forethought shall accomplish, grow up 
withal ?^consciously, from the unknown deeps in him ; — as the 
oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and 
waters shape themselves ; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's 
own laws, conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in 
Shakspeare lies hid ; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to 
himself ; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all : 
like roots, like sap and forces working underground ! Speech is 
great ; but Silence is greater. 

Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not 
blame Dante for his misery : it is as battle without victory ; but 
true battle, — the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakspeare 
greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. 
Doubt it not, he had his own sorrows : those Sonnets of his will 
even testify expressly in what deep waters he had waded, and 
swum struggling for his life ; — as what man like him ever failed 
to have to do ? It seems to me a heedless notion, our common 
one, that he sat like a bird on the bough ; and sang forth, free and 
offhand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so ; with 
no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic 
deer-poaching to such tragedy- writing, and not fall in with sorrows 
by the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Ham- 
let, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if 
his own heroic heart had never suffered ? — And now, in contrast 
with all this, observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love 
of laughter ! You would say, in no point does he exaggerate but 
only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn, 
are to be found in Shakspeare ; yet he is always in measure here ; 



696 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

never what Johnson would remark as a specially 'good hater.' 
But his laughtei seems to pour from him in floods ; he heaps all 
manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tum- 
bles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play ; you would say, with 
his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is 
always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or 
poverty ; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, 
will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desir- 
ing to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter 
means sympathy ; good laughter is not ' the crackling of thorns 
under the pot.' Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakspeare 
does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges 
tickle our very hearts ; and we dismiss them covered with explo- 
sions of laughter : but we like the poor fellows only the better for 
our laughing ; and hope they will get on well there, and continue 
Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on 
the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. 

We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual works ; 
though perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. 
Had we, for instance, all his plays reviewed as Hamlet in Wilhelm 
Meister, is ! A thing which might, one day, be done. August 
Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, Henry 
Fifth and the others, which is worth remembering. He calls 
them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, 
he knew no English History but what he had learned from Shak- 
speare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable 
Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized ; all 
rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence ; it is, as 
Schlegel says, epic ; — as indeed all delineation by a great thinker 
will be. There are right beautiful things in those Pieces, which 
indeed together form one beautiful thing. That battle of Agin- 
court strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort, we 
anywhere have of Shakspeare's. The description of the two hosts : 
the worn-out, jaded English ; the dread hour, big with destiny, 
when the battle shall begin ; and then that deathless valour : " Ye 



HER O - 1 VORSHIP. 697 

good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England ! " There is 
a noble Patriotism in it, — far other than the ' indifference ' you 
sometimes hear ascribed to Shakspeare. A true English heart 
breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business ; not bois- 
terous, protrusive ; all the better for that. There is a sound in 
it like the ring of steel. This man too had a right stroke in him, 
had it come to that ! 

But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, that we have 
no full impress of him there ; even as full as we have of many 
men. His works are so many windows, through which we see a 
glimpse of the world that was in him. All his works seem, com- 
paratively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping 
circumstances, giving only here and there a note of the full utter- 
ance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you like 
splendour out of Heaven ; bursts of radiance, illuminating the 
very heart of the thing : you say, "That is true, spoken once and 
forever ; wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul, 
that will be recognised as true ! " Such bursts, however, make us 
feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant ; that it is, in part, 
temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakspeare had to write for the 
Globe Playhouse : his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, 
into that and no other mould. It was with him, then, as it is with 
us all. No man works save under conditions. The sculptor can- 
not set his own free Thought before us j but his Thought as he 
could translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that 
were given. Disjecta membra 8 are all that we find of any Poet, 
or of any man. 

Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may recognise 
that he too was a Prophet, in his way ; of an insight analogous to 
the Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature 
seemed to this man also divine ; ^/zspeakable, deep as Tophet, 
high as Heaven : ' We are such stuff as Dreams are made of ! ' 
That scroll in Westminster Abbey, which few read with under- 

8 scattered limbs. 



698 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

standing, is of the depth of any seer. But the man sang ; did 
not preach, except musically. We call Dante the melodious 
Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakspeare 
the still more melodious Priest of a true Catholicism, the ' Uni- 
versal Church ' of the Future and of all times ? No narrow 
superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or 
perversion : a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousand- 
fold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature ; which let 
all men worship as they can ! We may say without offence, that 
there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this Shakspeare too ; 
not unfit to make itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. 
Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but in 
harmony ! — I cannot call this Shakspeare a ' Sceptic,' as some 
do ; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his 
time misleading them. No : neither unpatriotic, though he says 
little about his Patriotism ; nor sceptic, though he says little about 
his Faith. Such ' indifference ' was the fruit of his greatness 
withal : his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship 
(we may call it such) ; these other controversies, vitally important 
to other men, were not vital to him. 

But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious 
thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has brought us? 
For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in 
the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an 
eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light? — And, at 
bottom, was it not perhaps far better that this Shakspeare, every- 
way an unconscious man, was conscious of no Heavenly mes- 
sage? He did not feel, like Mahomet because he saw into 
those internal Splendours, that he specially was the ' Prophet of 
God : ' and was he not greater than Mahomet in that ? Greater ; 
and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more 
successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Maho- 
met's, of his supreme Prophethood ; and has come down to us 
inextricably involved in error to this day ; dragging along with it 
such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a ques- 



HER O - WORSHIP. 699 

tionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that 
Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious 
charlatan, perversity and simulacrum ; no Speaker, but a Bab- 
bler ! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have ex- 
hausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this 
Dante may still be young ; — while this Shakspeare may still pre- 
tend to be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for 
unlimited periods to come ! 

Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with 
^Eschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and univer- 
sality, last like them? He is sincere as they; reaches deep 
down like them, to the universal and perennial. But as for 
Mahomet, I think it had been better for him not to be so con- 
scious ! Alas, poor Mahomet ; all that he was conscious of was 
a mere error ; a futility and triviality, — as indeed such ever is. 
The truly great in him too was the unconscious : that he was a 
wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak-out with that great 
thunder- voice of his, not by words which he thought to be great, 
but by actions, by feelings, by a history which were great ! His 
Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity ; we do not 
believe, like him, that God wrote that ! The great Man here too, 
as always, is a Force of Nature : whatsoever is truly great in him 
springs-up from the ///articulate deeps. 

Well : this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be 
Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging ; 
whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on ; 
whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to 
the Treadmill ! We did not account him a god, like Odin, 
while he dwelt with us ; — on which point there were much to be 
said. But I will say rather, or repeat : In spite of the sad state 
Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare has 
actually become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, 
in this land of ours, which million of Englishmen, would we not 
give-up rather than the Stratford Peasant? There is no regi- 



700 THOMAS CARLYLR. 



ment of highest Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He is 
the grandest thing we have yet done. For our honour among 
foreign nations, as an ornament to our English Household, what 
item is there that we would not surrender rather than him ? Con- 
sider now, if they asked us, Will you give-up your Indian Em- 
pire or your Shakspeare, you English ; never have had any 
Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakspeare ! Really it 
were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless 
in official language ; but we, for our part too, should not we be 
forced to answer : Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire ; we 
cannot do without Shakspeare ! Indian Empire will go, at any 
rate, some day ; but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever 
with us ; we cannot give-up our Shakspeare ! 

Nay, apart from spiritualities ; and considering him merely as 
a real, marketable, tangibly-useful possession. England, before 
long, this Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the 
English ; in America, in New Holland, east and west to the very 
Antipodes, there will be a Saxondom covering great spaces of 
the Globe. And now, what is it that can keep all these together 
into virtually one Nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, 
but live at peace, in brotherlike intercourse, helping one another? 
This is justly regarded as the greatest practical problem, the 
thing all manner of sovereignties and governments are here 
to accomplish : what is it that will accomplish this ? Acts of 
Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is 
parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. Call it not 
fantastic, for there is much reality in it : Here, I say, is an 
English King, whom no time or chance, Parliament or combina- 
tion of Parliaments, can dethrone ! This King Shakspeare, does 
not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, 
gentlest, yet strongest of rallying- signs ; /^destructible ; really 
more valuable in that point of view than any other means or 
appliance whatsoever? We can fancy him as radiant aloft over 
all the Nations of Englishmen, a thousand years hence. From 
Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort of 






HER O - WORSHIP. 701 

Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are, they will 
say to one another : " Yes, this Shakspeare is ours ; we produced 
him, we speak and think by him ; we are of one blood and kind 
with him." The most common-sense politician, too, if he pleases, 
may think of that. 

Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articu- 
late voice ; that it produce a man who will speak- forth melo- 
diously what the heart of it means ! Italy, for example, poor 
Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing in any 
protocol or treaty as a unity at all ; yet the noble Italy is actually 
one : 9 Italy produced its Dante ; Italy can speak ! The Czar of 
all the Russias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, Cossacks 
and cannons ; and does a great feat in keeping such a tract of 
Earth politically together ; but he cannot yet speak. Something 
great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice 
of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to 
speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and 
Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity, while that Dante's 
voice is still audible. The nation that has a Dante is bound 
together as no dumb Russia can be. — We must here end what 
we had to say of the Hero-Poet. 

9 Italy has been politically one since 1870. 



ADVERTISEMENTS. 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 

(See also Classics for Children, pages 3 to 8.) 

Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature. 

Designed mainly to show characteristics of style. By William Minto, 
M.A., Professor of Logic and English Literature in the University ol 
Aberdeen, Scotland. 12mo. Cloth. 566 pages. Mailing Price, $1.05; 
Introduction, $1.50; Allowance, 40 cents. 

rjlHE main design is to assist in directing students in English 
composition to the merits and defects of our principal writers 
of prose, enabling them, in some degree at least, to acquire the one 
and avoid the other. The Introduction analyzes style : elements 
of style, qualities of style, kinds of composition. Part First gives 
exhaustive analyses of De Quincey, Macaulay, and Carlyle. These 
serve as a key to all the other authors treated. Part Second takes 
up the prose authors in historical order, from the fourteenth cen- 
tury up to the early part of the nineteenth. 



Hiram Corson, Prof. English Lit- 
erature, Cornell University: With- 
out going outside of this book, an ear- 
nest student could get a knowledge of 



English prose styles, based ou the 
soundest principles of criticism, such 
as he could not get in any twenty vol- 
umes which I know of. 



The Introduction to Minto's English Prose. 

44 pages. 12mo. Paper, 15 cents. 

Reprinted in this form especially for the use of the C. L. S. C. 

Minto's Characteristics of the English Poets, 

from Chaucer to Shirley. 

By William Minto, M.A., Professor of Logic and English Literature 
in the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. 12mo. Cloth. xi + 382 pages. 
Mailing Price, $1.65; for Introduction, $1.50; Allowance, 40 cents. 

rpHE chief objects of the author are: (1) To bring into clear 
-*- light the characteristics of the several poets ; and (2) to trace 
how far each was influenced by his literary predecessors and his 
contemporaries. 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 



15 



The Practical Elements of Rhetoric. 

By John F. Genung, Ph.D., Professor of Rhetoric in Amherst College. 
12mo. Cloth, xiv + 483 pages. Mailing Price, $1.40 ; for Introduction, 
$1.25 ; allowance for an old book in exchange, 40 cents. 

rpHE treatment is characterized by good sense, simplicity, origi- 
nality, availability, completeness, and ample illustration. 

The author recognizes that rhetoric is only means to an end, 
and that its rules and principles and devices must be employed 
with caution and good sense. 

Great care has been taken to free the treatment from artificialities. 

Traditional principles and rules have been carefully considered, 
but discarded unless found to rest on a basis of truth and practical 
value. The treatment is throughout constructive and the student 
is regarded at every step as endeavoring to make literature. The 
work has been prepared not more in the study than in the class- 
room. All of the literary forms have been given something of the 
fulness hitherto accorded only to argument and oratory. No im- 
portant principle has been presented without illustrations drawn 
from the usage of the best authorities. 

Genung's Rhetoric, though a work on a trite subject, has aroused 
general enthusiasm by its freshness and practical worth. Among 
the many leading institutions that have introduced it are Yale, 
AVellesley, and Smith Colleges ; Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Vander- 
bilt, and Northwestern Universities ; and the Universities of Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, and Michigan. 



C. F. Richardson, Prof, of English 
Literature, Dartmouth College, and 
author of a History of American 
Literature : I find it excellent both 
in plan and execution. 

Miss M. A. Jordan, Prof, of Rhet- 
oric, Smith College, Northampton, 
Mass. : The critic is conscious of a 
feeling of surprise as he misses the 
orthodox dulness. The analysis of 
topics is clear, the illustrations are 
pertinent and of value in themselves, 
the rules are concise and portable. 

T. W. Hunt, Prof, of Eng. Litera- 
ture, Princeton College, Princeton, 
N.J. : It impresses me as a philo- 



sophic and useful manual. I like 
especially its literary spirit. 

Jas. M. Garnett, Prof, of English, 
University of Virginia : I have care- 
fully read the whole of it, and am 
determined to introduce it at once 
into my class. It suits me better 
than any other text-book of rhetoric 
that I have examined. 

W. H. Magruder, Prof, of English, 
Agricultural and Mechanical College 
of Mississippi: For clearness of 
thought, lucidity of expression, apt- 
ness of illustration, —in short, for 
real teaching power, — I have never 
seen this work equalled. 



16 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 



A Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis. 

Studies in Style and Invention, designed to accompany the author's 
Practical Elements of Rhetoric. By John F. Genung, Ph.D., Pro- 
fessor of Rhetoric in Amherst College. 12mo. Cloth, xii + 306 pages. 
Mailing Price, $ 1.25 ; Introduction and Teachers' Price, $1.12. 

rpHIS handbook follows the general plan of the larger text-book, 
being designed to alternate with that from time to time, as 
different stages of the subject are reached. Under the two heads 
of Studies in Style and Studies in Invention, a series of selections 
from the best prose writers is given, with notes, questions, and 
references, bringing out whatever is theoretically instructive 
therein ; the whole so arranged as to illustrate, in progressive and 
cumulative order, the various procedures of discourse, from simple 
choice of words up to the delicate inventive problems of narration 
and oratory. 

Genung's Rhetoric, followed by the Rhetorical Analysis, and this 
by Minto (see page 12), make a course that has been found emi- 
nently interesting and fruitful. 



Margaret E. Stratton, Prof, of 
Eng. and Rhetoric, Wellesley Col- 
lege : I find in the hook just the kind 
of work I have tried to give my 
classes, and so arranged that even a 
dull student must become interested, 
and gain in the power of composition. 
I consider Prof. Genung's work in 
both his Rhetoric and Handbook a 
most valuable contribution to the 
study of English. {Oct. 5, 1889.) 

J. H. Gilmore, Prof, of Rhetoric, 
Univ. of Rochester, N. Y.: This strikes 
me as a very significant attempt to 
open a road that college students espe- 
cially need to travel. (Sept. 1, 1889.) 

W. B. Chamberlain, Prof, of Rhet- 
oric, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio : 
The Analysis particularly pleases me, 
as affording a very natural and prac- 
tical bridging from rhetoric to lit- 
erature. The plan, contents, and 
execution seem to me about all that 
could be desired. Every live teacher 



of rhetoric has tried to give his 
classes something of such work in 
connection with his text-book; but 
the results that may be attained by 
means of this help must be far more 
satisfactory than those secured in 
more desultory ways. (Nov. 18, 1889.) 

W. J. Eolfe, Editor of Shake- 
speare, etc. : It is the best thing in 
the way of practical rhetoric that I 
have ever seen. The selections are 
singularly happy, and the analysis 
of them is admirable. 

John Seath, Inspector of High 
Schools, Ontario : It is the first 
good, systematic application of rhet- 
oric that I have seen. I recommend 
it heartily to teachers of English. It 
cannot but prove eminently useful. 

E. P. Anderson, Prof, of English 
Literature and History, Ohio Univ., 
Athens, Ohio : I think it is an ad- 
mirable work, helpful alike to stu- 
dents of rhetoric and of literature. 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 



17 



Hudson's Expurgated Shakespeare. 

For Schools, Clubs, and Families. Revised and enlarged Editions of. 
twenty-three Plays. Carefully expurgated, with Explanatory Notes at 
the bottom of the page, and Critical Notes at the end of each volume. 
By H. N. Hudson, LL.D., Editor of The Harvard Shakespeare. One 
play in each volume. Square 16mo. Varying in size from 128-253 
pages. Mailing Price of each: Cloth, 50 cents; Paper, 35 cents. Intro- 
duction Price: Cloth, 45 cents; Paper, 30 cents. Per set tin box), 
$12.00. (To Teachers, $10.00.) For list see next page. 

DOME of the special features of this edition are the convenient 
size and shape of the volumes ; the clear type, superior press- 
work, and attractive binding; the ample introductions: the ex- 
planatory notes, easily found at the foot of the page ; the critical 
notes for special study; the judicious expurgation, never mangling 
either style or story ; the acute and sympathetic criticism that has 
come to be associated with Dr. Hudson's name ; and, finally, the 
reasonableness of the price. 



Oliver Wendell Holmes: An edi- 
tion of any play of Shakespeare's to 
which Mr. Hudson's name is affixed 
does not need a line from anybody to 
commend it. 

Cyrus Northrop, Prof, of English 
Literature, Yale College: They are 
convenient in form and edited by 
Hudson, — two good things which I 
3an see at a glance. 

Hiram Corson, Prof, of Ehet. and 
Eng. Lit., Cornell University : I con- 
iider them altogether excellent. The 
aotes give all the aid needed for an 
understanding of the text, without 
waste and distraction of the student's 
mind. The introductory matter to 
the several plays is especially worthy 
of approbation. (Jan. 28, 1887.) 

C. F. P. Bancroft, Prin. of Phil- 
lips Academy, Andover, Mass. : Mr. 
Hudson's appreciation of Shake- 
speare amounted to genius. His 
editing accordingly exhibits more 
than learning and industry, — it re- 
veals insight, sympathy, and convic- 
tion. He leads the pupil into the 



very mind and heart of " the thou* 
sand-souled Shakespeare." 

Byron Groce, Master in Public 
Latin School, Boston : The amended 
text is satisfactory; the typography 
is excellent; the notes ai'e brief, al- 
ways helpful, not too numerous, and 
put where they will do the most good ; 
the introductions are vigorous, in- 
spiriting, keenly and soundly critical, 
and very attractive to boys , especially 
on account of their directness and 
warmth, for all boys like enthusi* 
asm. (Jan. 22, 1887.) 

C. T. Winchester, Prof, of English, 
Wesleyan University : The notes and 
comments in the school edition are 
admirably fitted to the need of the 
student, removing his difficulties by 
stimulating his interest and quicken- 
ing his perception. (Feb. 10, 1887.) 

A. C. Perkins, Prin. of A<?clpM 
Academy, Brooklyn: In the prepa- 
ration of the School Shakespeare, 
Mr. Hudson met fully the capacities 
and needs of students in our schools 
and colleges. (Feb, i, 1887.) 



20 HIGHER ENGLISH. 

Hudson's Selections of Prose and Poetry. 

Annotated. 12mo. Paper. Mailing Price of each, 20 cents ; Introdne 
tion Price, 15 cents. 

Edmund Burke. Section 1. Five Speeches and ten Papers. Sec- 
tion 2. A Sketch of his Life. A Letter to a Noble Lord, and elevec 
extracts. 

Daniel Webster. Section 1. The Reply to Hayne, and six extracts 
Section 2. A Sketch of his Life, and extracts from twenty-five 
Speeches. 

Lord Baton. A Sketch of his Life, and extracts from thirty Essays. 

Wordsworth. Section I. Life of Wordsworth, the Prelude, and thirty 
three Poems. Section II. Sixty Poems and Sonnets, accompanied 
by foot-notes, historical and explanatory. 

Coleridge and Burns. Biographies of the Poets, and forty -five Poems. 

Addison and Goldsmith. A Life of each, fifteen Papers from Addison, 
and eleven Prose Selections from Goldsmith, with The Deserted Village. 

Craik's English of Shakespeare. 

Illustrated in a Philological Commentary on Julius Caesar. By Georgr 
L. Craik, Queen's College, Belfast. Edited, from the third revised 
London edition, by W. J. Rolfe, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo. Cloth. 400 
pages. Mailing Price, $1.00 ; Introduction, 90 cents. 

A X exposition in regard both to the language or style of Shake- 
speare, and to the English language generally. 

Shakspere's Versification. 

Notes on Shakspere's Versification, with Appendix on the Verse Tests v 
and a short Descriptive Bibliography. By George H. Browne, A.M. 
12mo. Paper. 34 pages. Price, interleaved, 25 cents. 

Shakespeare and Chaucer Examinations. 

Edited, with some remarks on the " Class-Room Study of Shakespeare,' 
by William Taylor Thom, M.A., Professor of English in Hollins In- 
stitute, Va. Square 16mo. Cloth. 346 pages. Mailing Price, $1.10; 
for introduction, $1.00. 

rpHIS is a revised and enlarged edition of the Two Shakespeare 

Examinations, published several years and very much liked by 

teachers of English Literature. That book contained two exami 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 



21 



nations held at Rollins Institute in 1881, on Hamlet; in 1882, on 
Macbeth, for the annual prize by the New Shakespeare Society of 
England. Besides these, there are in the new edition the Exami- 
nations on King Lear (1883), on Othello (1884), on The Merchant 
of Venice (1886) ; a Chaucer Examination (1886), set chiefly by 
Professor Child, of Harvard University, and based upon the " Pro- 
logue," " The Knight's Tale," and the " Xun's Priest's Tale " of 
the Canterbury Tales ; with some additional remarks on the Study 
of Shakespeare and references to the Tempest. 



W. M. Baskervill, Prof, in Van- 
derbilt University : We heartily rec- 
ommend these examinations to teach- 



ers. They are full of suggestive 
information. They will serve as 
admirable models. 



Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning. 

By William John Alexander, Ph.D., Munro Professor of the English 
Language and Literature, Dalhousie College and University, Halifax, 
N.S., and formerly Fellow of Johns Hopkins University. 12mo. Cloth, 
v + 212 pages. Mailing Price, $1.10 ; for introduction, $1.00. 

rpHE book opens with an account of Browning's most striking- 
peculiarities in method and style, and attempts to find an 
explanation of these in the conditions amidst which the Poet has 
worked, and in the nature of the themes which he treats. In the 
next place, an exposition is given of those general ideas pervading 
his work, which can only be gathered from the studj T of many of 
his poems, and yet are needful for the full understanding of almost 
any one of them. This exposition is contained in a series of chap- 
ters treating of "Browning's Philosophy," "Christianity as Pre- 
sented in Browning's Works," and " Browning's Theory of Art." 
These chapters are followed by a brief chronological review of his 
writings, and characterization of his development. The various 
points treated throughout the Introduction are illustrated by 
a series of selected poems, furnished with careful analyses and 
copious critical comments. Attention is especially directed to the 
Analysis of Sordello, much fuller and more exact, it is believed, 
than any heretofore published. The author's aim is to prepare for 
further unassisted study of the poet. 



F. J. Furnivall, Founder of the 
original Brorcning Society : I think 
your estimate of Browning and your 



analysis of his limitations and their 
causes are the best and truest yet 
made. (From a letter to the author,) 



